Jim was out of breath, the air came from from his mouth in icy fumes, and it was him who said:
‘Tommy. How long have we been friends.’
‘All of our lives,’ Tommy said.
‘I can’t remember us ever not being friends. When would that have been.’ Jim said. ‘I think it could last the rest of our lives,’ he said carefully, in a low voice. ‘Don’t you think.’
‘We will change. We were more like each other before than we are now.’
‘We’ve never been like each other. Think of your parents. Of the time you had.’
‘That’s true, I guess. And you’ve been a Christian. I’ve never been a Christian. Or maybe a little. A little Christian.’
‘I’m not a Christian any more. I’m a socialist.’
‘Yes, that’s right, you are,’ Tommy said. ‘But it will last if we want it to. It depends on us. We can be friends for as long as we want to.’
‘And we want to, don’t we,’ Jim said.
‘Sure,’ Tommy said. ‘I will, at least. Won’t you.’
‘Sure I will,’ Jim said, and he felt so happy, for what would the future have been without Tommy, what would life have been, and they could talk in this way only because it was night and the light was different and they had their caps on, which made them different from who they were during daytime in the real world and at the same time made them more similar to each other, even though Tommy was taller than Jim. But they couldn’t see that, and the moon shone over Lake Aurtjern and it was as cold as hell and no one could see them with their caps on anyway, and nothing was as it used to be, and they could say anything they liked, and Jim said:
‘Is it because you think I’m an OK person that you’re friends with me. Is there something special about me that you think is good.’
‘We’re friends because we’re friends. We’ve always been friends. You’re Jim. You’ve always been Jim.’
‘Is that a good thing.’
‘Sure, it’s good.’
‘That’s great,’ Jim said, but suddenly he wasn’t so sure if it was enough. It didn’t feel like it was, not quite, because maybe it was more like you had to be worthy. He had thought that a few times, that he ought to make himself worthy, that was how it felt. But he swallowed those feelings, he let them go, and so instead he said:
‘Do you ever hear from your mother or father.’
‘No.’
‘Don’t you think that’s sad.’
‘No, I don’t think it’s sad. I don’t give a damn.’
‘I can understand that,’ Jim said. And Tommy thought, does he, and maybe he did, for they were so close to each other that there might be some current between them, an electric arc that made one feel what the other felt. That could be it, because right now Tommy had been thinking about his mother, that she could see him gliding around on this lake in the night and from the heaven above she said in the voice that he didn’t remember, is that there my son, she said, with that cap on, no it isn’t, I don’t know that boy, he doesn’t look like my Tommy, which of course he didn’t any more. It was already six years since she had gone missing, and that’s why he had no one else but Jim, apart from Jonsen, and Jonsen was more like an uncle, and he was his boss at the sawmill where he now worked full-time for the second year. He had Siri, but Siri had changed, she went to the gymnas in Valmo and lived with the Lydersens in Mørk. He saw her a few times, when they met at the petrol station and went down behind the Co-op to the lake, as they used to do before, but they often came up again frustrated and embarrassed, and they didn’t meet that much any more. The twins had become like all the other children in the neighbourhood, they said hi Tommy, hi Jonsen, in one voice, and walked past them, arm in arm on the road, and Tommy stopped and watched them until they were out of sight behind the Liens’ door, and not once did they turn round to look back at him, who had taken care of them, who had been their brother.
‘I don’t talk about them,’ Tommy said.
‘I know,’ Jim said. ‘You don’t have to.’
‘I know,’ Tommy said, ‘and I don’t mind you asking. It’s just that I don’t feel like talking about them. There’s nothing to say.’
‘That’s fine by me.’
‘I know. It’s fine. Do we make another round.’
‘Definitely.’
That was when it happened. Suddenly there was the loud sound of ice cracking beneath them and just as loud it came back off the hill behind the lake and almost knocked them over, and they got scared and thought, now the goddamn ice is breaking under our feet and it will open up and we’ll fall into the freezing black water and in no time we’ll be paralysed and drown, no question about it. And you could forget about swimming with your skates on. So they leapt forward as though a starting gun had been fired and it was the speed skating championships in Bislett Stadium, with its inside and outside lanes and the stands and all that belonged to it, but this was no skating race, and no one could see them, there was only Jim and Tommy under the moon above Lake Aurtjern, and then there was another crack and it cut through the soft, gentle night with a dry, sharp sound and they threw themselves forward and pushed off with the blades, and still they moved so unbelievably slowly, in slow motion, as if in thick treacle. And it was going to go wrong, they could both feel it, or at least Jim did, so whether he meant to or not, he struck out with his right arm, and his hand in its mitten hit Tommy in the chest and knocked him backwards while Jim shot forwards, and Tommy was sent flying on to the frozen lake and landed on his knees and slid for a few metres more and sat there finally with his elbows on the ice and his hands in the air watching Jim and his back, as he reached the shore.
Slowly Tommy got up on to his skates, brushed down his elbows, brushed his knees and called:
‘Jesus Christ, Jim, it was only the ice settling, It won’t break, it’s too thick. It was just settling,’ he called, ‘that’s what it does when it’s so goddamn cold, it’s just expanding, Jim, and settling.’
Jim was kneeling now, on the shore, his knees sunk into the snow, he had taken his cap off and didn’t answer and didn’t turn, and then he called in a strangely muffled voice, as if from the inside of a sack or something else you could lose yourself in, with his back to Tommy and Lake Aurtjern:
‘I know that, it’s just settling, that’s what it’s doing, I know, and I didn’t get scared, that’s not what happened, I didn’t mean to stop you. I just tripped and had to grab something, I lost my balance, you got that, didn’t you.’
Tommy was on his feet again and was slowly gliding towards the bank on his skates, and the knees of his trousers were white in a smooth, polished way.