“Eva, my dear! Where on earth have you been? I’ve been ringing for days!”
“My phone’s been cut off. But I’ve got it back now, I was just a bit late with a payment.”
“I’ve told you you’re to let me know if you need anything,” her father growled.
“Not having a phone for a couple of days won’t kill me,” she said easily, “and you’re not exactly flush with money yourself.”
“It’s better for me to starve than you. Fetch Emma to the phone, I want to hear her unsullied little voice.”
“She’s with Jostein for a few days, it’s the autumn break. So tell me, do I sound sullied, is that it?”
“Your voice has a tainted undertone now and then. I always have the feeling you only tell me a fraction of what’s going on.”
“Yes, that’s right. It’s called being considerate. You’re not a spring chicken anymore, you know.”
“I think you should come over soon so that we can tease each other properly, over a glass of wine. I can’t do good ripostes on the phone.” He was snuffling a bit as if he had a cold.
“I’ll be along one of these days. You could always ring Jostein and get Emma there. Besides, she isn’t entirely unsullied, I think she takes after you basically.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. Will he be embarrassed if I phone?”
“No, don’t be silly. He’s really fond of you. He’s always frightened you’re angry that he walked out, so if you phone he’ll be pleased.”
“I’m extremely angry! You didn’t think otherwise, surely?”
“Don’t say that to him.”
“I’ll never understand why you’re so loyal to a man who ran off like that.”
“I’ll tell you sometime, over a glass of wine.”
“A father should know everything about his only child,” he scolded crossly. “The life you lead is just one almighty secret.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “It certainly is, Dad. But you know, important truths will out. When the time is ripe.”
“The time’s almost up,” he answered. “I’m old.”
“That’s what you always say when you’re feeling sorry for yourself. Get some wine, and I’ll come over. I’ll ring and tell you when. You are wearing your slippers, aren’t you?”
“That’s for me to know, and you to wonder. When you start dressing like a woman, I’ll start dressing like an old man.”
“That’s a deal, Dad.”
They said nothing for a while, but she could hear his breathing. Eva felt he was so close that she could almost sense his warm breath coming down the phone line and caressing her cheek. Her father was a sturdy root from which Eva derived all her strength. Somewhere at the back of her mind she would occasionally register that he would die soon and that all the intimacy she knew in life would be torn from her, stripped away, as if someone were tearing the hide and hair from her body.
Her thoughts made her feel icy.
“You’re not thinking pleasant thoughts, Eva.”
“I’ll come soon. I don’t think life’s much fun really.”
“Then we can console one another.”
She put down the phone. It was so quiet after that, she went to the window and her thoughts ran wild even though she tried to control them. What way did we go, she thought, to get to the cabin that time, didn’t we go through Kongsberg first? It was so long ago. More than twenty-five years. Maja’s father had driven them in the van. And they’d got drunk, the heather around the hut had been dappled with little blotches of stew and fruit cocktail, and some of their clothes had to be left outside at night. Through Kongsberg, she thought, and across the bridge. Up toward Sigdal, wasn’t that the way? A red cabin with green window frames. Tiny, standing almost totally by itself. But it was a long way. Two hundred, maybe three hundred kilometers. Nearly two million. How much room did a sum like that take up, she thought, if it was in various denominations it would hardly fit into a shoebox. And where in a small cabin could one hide such a sum? In the cellar? Up the chimney? Or maybe down that outside toilet. They’d had to throw in handfuls of earth and bark, each time they’d used it. Or was it hidden in empty food tins in the fridge? Maja was ingenious. It wouldn’t be easy if anyone decided to search for it, she thought. But who would search for it? Nobody knew about it, and so it would lie there forever and crumble to dust, or had she told anyone else? If that were the case, perhaps others were thinking along the same lines as she was now, thinking about the two million and dreaming.
She went back to the studio and began scraping at the black canvas again. October wasn’t exactly high season for mountain cabins at that sort of altitude, perhaps there wasn’t a soul up there, nobody to see her. If she parked a little way off and walked the final bit — if she could even remember the way. Turn left at a yellow shop, she recalled, then on, up and up, almost to the tree line. Millions of sheep. The tourist hostel and the large lake, she could park there, down by the water. She kept scraping at the canvas. Two million. Her own gallery. Just paint and paint and never worry about money, not for years. Take good care of her father and of Emma. Just reach into a bowl and pull the money out whenever she needed it. Or a safe-deposit box. Why on earth hadn’t Maja put the money in a safe-deposit box? Perhaps because a safe-deposit box had to be registered and could be traced. The money wasn’t legitimate. Eva scratched harder. If she wanted to get hold of the money she’d have to break into the cabin, and she couldn’t imagine herself daring to do that. Breaking open the door with a crowbar or smashing a pane of glass would certainly be audible a long way off. But if there wasn’t anyone up there... She could go in the evening and arrive during the night. Although it would be hard to search in the dark. A torch maybe. She threw away the piece of sandpaper and walked slowly down the stairs to the cellar. A drawer in the workbench contained a torch that Jostein had left. It gave a miserably poor light. She put her hand into the paint pot where she’d hidden Maja’s pocket money and pulled out a bundle of notes, mounted the stairs, and put on her coat. She pushed away the small stabbings of her conscience, and the slight, almost inaudible note of caution sounding from her common sense. First, she’d pay all her bills and then there were a couple of things she needed as well. It was now midday. In three hours Elmer would have finished his shift, and would walk to his car. Eva put on her sunglasses. She stared at herself in the mirror: dark hair, dark glasses, and coat. She was unrecognizable.
There was an ironmonger’s in the square. She didn’t dare ask for a crowbar, but instead wandered along the shelves looking for something she could push into the crack around a door. She found a sturdy chisel, extra large and with a sharp edge, and a solid hammer. It had a grooved rubber handle. She had to inquire about the torch.
“What are you going to use it for?” asked the ironmonger.
“For lighting,” Eva said, nonplussed. She stared at his stomach bulging beneath the nylon coat. Its buttons strained dangerously.
“Aha, yes, I realize that. But they make torches for different purposes. I mean, are you going to use it for working, or for walking at night, or for signaling...?”
“Working,” she said quickly.
He produced a water- and shock-resistant Maglite torch, it was long and neat with a narrow body and a beam that could be focused as required. “This is about the best you can get. Lifetime guarantee. The American cops use them. Four hundred and fifty kroner.”
“Oh God! Yes, I’ll take it,” she said quickly.
“It’s also good for bashing people on the head with,” he said earnestly. “Burglars and the like.”
Eva frowned. She wasn’t sure if he was being serious.
The tools cost a fortune, more than seven hundred kroner. She paid and carried them out in a gray paper bag. She felt like the archetypal housebreaker herself, all she needed were some sneakers and a balaclava. Then she realized she hadn’t eaten. She went to the first-floor café at Jensen Manufaktur where she bought two sandwiches, one smoked salmon and egg and one cheese, a glass of milk, and a coffee. She saw no one she knew. She didn’t really know anyone anyway, was merely surrounded by nameless faces which demanded nothing of her, and she liked that. She had such a lot to think about now. When she’d finished she went to the bookshop and bought a road atlas. She sat on some steps in the pedestrian precinct, partly hidden by an ice cream sign, and began to search. She rediscovered the way fairly quickly, did a provisional measurement with her fingers and came to the conclusion that it was at least two hundred kilometers. At all events it would take two and a half hours to drive there. If she left at nine she’d be up there before midnight. Alone, in a cabin on the Hardanger Plateau with a hammer and chisel, did she dare?