“Sorry, Buster, no deal,” or something to that effect, and then she left after only a few days; quite quietly and unnoticed she went back to the assistant manager and the King’s Town.
That night my father disappeared. There was to be a family gathering with all the brothers and sisters and their wives and husbands in honour of the Danish fiancée, which was no longer a secret. They wanted to see Frank Jansen finally crossing the finishing line. He was thirty-seven. But she did not come. Nor did he, and the next day he was not at work. It was a sensation. Nobody knew where he was, no-one could remember when they had actually seen him last, and after a day had passed they grew frightened and began to search. First among the friends he had, boxers and football players of the Olympic team in Berlin in 1936 which he never got to, although he had trained and trained, and then among those he knew in Bryn male voice choir, but he was not with any of them, and they searched in the cafés he went to from time to time to have a ginger ale and talk, and they were afraid he might be drunk although no-one had ever seen him drunk at any time. Finally, they organised a search party in the Østmark Forest. They carried on for three days, and the wind was howling and the rain came down as if Domesday was near, and still more and more people joined in; shoemakers and cross-country skiers, preachers and members of the choir, and one or two wrestlers with upper arms thick as birch trunks came rolling along, and they divided the forest into sections among themselves and walked past lakes and hills, up tortuous paths and down still more tortuous trails made by roe deer and elk. In the evenings they crowded together in the congregational hall with dripping clothes and spread maps out on the table in front of them where they ticked off the areas they had already covered, and next morning lorries trundled up to the parking place by the Østmark café, and from there they walked into the forest again. They shouted and sang baritone and bass through the rain that fell so heavily the voices were felled to the ground, and they shook their heads at each other, the water splashing off their sou’westers, the wet oilskins shining among the tree trunks when they flung out their arms in frustration, and they were close to giving up.
And then, on the third day, just before nightfall, the low sun broke through the steel-grey layer of clouds and sent a ray of light slanting down through the trees on to a solitary hut, and those among them who were Baptists saw it as a sign and went in. There he lay on a bunk sleeping like one dead, with the picture of the Danish fiancée clutched in one hand. He had not eaten for four days, his clothes were in rags, he had bruises on his face from his own fists, and they woke him, and he did not know where he was or what had happened.
“Has the referee counted to ten,” he said. The men standing in the hut stroked their faces with sopping wet hands, and they looked at each other, fearing the worst, but he did recover, although he was never the same again.
Some months later he received a letter telling him he had a child in Denmark, in Jutland, with a lady he had met in a café near the factory and had spent a short time with the previous autumn, and who then just vanished. And it was not that he did not remember her, but it was more like a dream, for he had taken her to the cottage at Bunnefjord one night when the snow drifted past the walls and blew across the water, but inside it was warm and the night was warm, and when he woke up next morning she had gone and the snow had gone, and he did not see her again. Then his family kept on until she came alone on the Oslo boat, and after just a few days they went to the tabernacle together, and when they came out again they stopped on the pavement in the group of brothers and sisters, and he laughed and said: “Nailed to a cross on earth.”
I am not sure now what Aunt Solgunn has told me and what I have made up myself, but what I think as I lie in the dark under the duvet looking up at the ceiling is that I would never have believed he was capable of it: passions, deep despair. All that. And would it have made any difference if it was something I had known while he lived?
“Without a doubt,” I say aloud, “it would have made a great difference,” and I know that is true, and nothing I can do or anything I can say will make time stop and go into reverse and make that difference less. And then the doorbell rings. I lie there listening. It does not ring again, but I am sure someone is standing outside waiting. I cannot ignore it now I have heard it, and maybe it is the Kurd on the third floor, perhaps he needs help again, perhaps the door to the stairwell is locked and he is standing in the rain without a key. I get up and put my trousers on and go out into the hall and open the door. Mrs Grinde is standing there. Her hair is wet. Her son is in her arms, swaddled in a woollen blanket. He is asleep with his head falling backwards. There are shining drops on his face. He does not look so bossy now.
“Hi,” I say. She makes no reply. I stand there like an idiot, looking at her, and she bites her lip and gazes past me with the heavy boy in her arms, and I say:
“Do you want me to hold him for a bit?”
She shakes her head. Then I open the door wide and say:
“Come in, then.”
Without hesitation, she walks past me, and that almost makes me scared. I do not know whether I can handle this. It is so long since anyone I have known in that way was here, two years in fact, that I do not remember what the form is, and with the boy it seems strangely intimate, almost like family. I do not know if I want family any more. It is too risky. I close the door, and follow her into the living room and say: “You can put him on the sofa.”
And she does, she lays him down on the sofa very carefully with the woollen blanket tightly round his body, and he sleeps just as soundly. Slowly, she straightens her back as she takes off her coat and places it over the back of a chair, and then she turns towards me and runs her hand through her hair with her head on one side and says:
“I couldn’t leave him alone.”
“Of course not,” I say.
“Why didn’t you answer the phone?” she says. She is not wearing her glasses, but she does not peer either. How did she know I was here and could pick up the telephone?
“Do you wear contact lenses?” I say, and then she blushes quite visibly although the light is not on, and she faintly nods, and I say:
“I don’t know. I do not know why I did not answer the phone. So many people call. It keeps on ringing.” That is not really true, but it is true that I don’t know why.
“You were quite visible though, standing there, in the light from the pathway,” she says and smiles for the first time and now I am the one to blush. How many other people saw me? The naked man on stairwell F. She takes the few steps towards me, lifts her hand and places it lightly on my chest.
“You looked good,” she says, and then leans forward and lays her head just as lightly over her hand and says:
“I am taking a chance here.” Her hair tickles my chest and her mouth tickles, I am well aware I am standing here in my trousers and nothing else, and it is perfectly quiet and dark around us. Only the boy breathing on the sofa, and I cautiously place an arm round her shoulders, not committing myself.