After they had eaten the baguette and drunk some coffee, he said: – You’re still shivering. We need to warm you up.
A few drops of rain showed on the cloth. He pulled her to her feet.
– Five minutes, on the double, he ordered.
He set off running ahead of her, round the tarn and up the hill, and stopped to wait for her there. The drops of rain were bigger now, heavier. She cast an anxious look up into the trees.
– We’d better find somewhere to take cover, he said and took her by the hand.
The little shelter made of spruce branches was still there on the other side of the hill. At first glance everything looked to be much as it had been on his previous visit. Only the empty bottles were gone. He couldn’t see the little book of Buddhist scriptures either.
– Is this where you live? she smiled.
He crawled inside.
– When the moon is full I sleep out in the forest, he answered and pulled her inside after him.
– Bed and everything! she exclaimed. – How did you know about this?
He held her close to him.
– Miriam, he said quietly. – I’ve tried everything. Not even cold showers help.
– Don’t help a bit, she echoed.
– I just can’t hold out any longer.
– Me neither.
He took off his jacket and vest, bunched them under her; she pulled her shorts off again, kept the little panties on. Pressed her forehead against his and looked into his eyes.
– Did you mean what you just said? That this is goodbye?
Her skin still smelled of the swampy water, mingled with sweat and damp earth and the sap from the pine branches of the roof. He pulled off her panties, noticing that he shook his head as though he were answering her. In the same instant he heard a crack from one of the branches. He twisted round and looked up. Glimpsed a shadow outside. And there, between the pine branches, an eye staring down at them. He tensed himself, pulled away from her and crawled to the entrance.
– What is it, Axel?
He saw no one, listened out among the trees. Then he stretched across the roof of the shelter. A hole had worn through the plastic between the branches; he could look down at her.
– Are you trying to scare me?
There was fear in her voice. And at that moment he saw himself standing there naked, bent over a shelter deep in the heart of the forest. Her fear acted like a signal to him and he reached his arm inside and picked up his clothes.
– It was nothing, he reassured her. – Probably just a bear or something.
It was drizzling as they walked back towards the bicycles. He took her by the hand. If anything more had happened there in the shelter, he thought, if the inevitable had taken place, then we could have been done with it. But now she’s closer to me.
– Did I tell you I had a brother? he asked suddenly.
– A twin. You thought it was him your patient saw in the street the other day.
He took a few deep breaths before making up his mind.
– I thought I saw him too. The same morning as you started at the clinic.
He stopped and turned towards her.
– In a manner of speaking Brede didn’t exist any more. But these last few weeks he’s been cropping up in my thoughts the whole time. Now he won’t disappear again. Just then, in that shelter, it was as though I saw him standing there peering down at us. I don’t want to involve you in any of this…
She moved close to him, put both arms around him.
– I want to be involved. I love everything you tell me about yourself.
He started to walk on, but didn’t let go of her.
– It must be twenty years since I last saw Brede. He’d just been thrown out of some dive in town; I happened to be passing by. He couldn’t stand upright. I offered to walk him home. Or give him money for a taxi. He lay there on the pavement glaring up at me. I want fucking nothing from you, he was screaming. One day I’ll destroy you, the same way you destroyed me.
22
CECILIE DAVIDSEN DIDN’T go home. She’d walked all the way from the hospital to Vindern. Now she kept on walking up the hill. It had turned dark. For several hours she wandered aimlessly. Ris, Slemdal, all the way up to Voksenåsen, down again to the pond at Holmendammen.
How many other doctors would have taken the trouble to knock on the door and tell her in person? Glenne was the type who cared. The fact that she was going to die mattered to him. You’re not to die, Mummy. It was nine days ago now. He’d been different from the way he was in the office down in Bogstadveien. Actually she had wanted a female doctor. Or an elderly man. Axel Glenne was younger than her. And yet once she had got used to it, she realised how lucky she had been. He helped her to relax. He was tall and strong and able to deal with anything. But that day last week, when he’d come to her house, he had seemed unsure of himself. Almost confused. He’d come because he wanted to talk to her in person, face to face. He’d come to tell her she was going to die. She had known it. From the moment she realised that the lump had grown. Still she couldn’t understand what he was doing standing at her door. Benedicte understood. Before she went to sleep that evening she had said: You’re not to die, Mummy. And instead of replying, No, darling, I’m not going to die, not for a long, long time, she had started to cry. Benedicte did all she could to comfort her, but when Henrik returned home later that evening, she just sat on the sofa, staring, unable to speak. Not daring to speak. Because once she told him, it would be real. The truth of it would dawn on her.
She had been to the hospital that afternoon. Had a long talk with a nurse. Finally the surgeon arrived, the one who was going to do her operation. Are you Cecilie Davidsen?She would so liked to have answered no, told him he was looking for someone else. But there was no way out of it. He was friendly, obviously busy and yet he didn’t hurry. But he too knew that it couldn’t end well. He didn’t say, You’re going to pull through. He said, We have to be realistic about this. We’ll do everything we can, but the result is uncertain.
He’d given her a sick note. She regretted agreeing to the idea. Going home to wait. All the thoughts with nowhere to put them. Every time she tried to drive them away, they swarmed over her. Haakon was eighteen. He would be all right. Benedicte was the one she had to think about. The rest of her childhood and all her adolescence without her mother. Would Henrik ask for a less demanding position at work? Would he find another job? Impossible to imagine. He’d ask his mother for help. She was still reasonably fit but didn’t have the energy she once had. And he would ask his sister. He would send Benedicte to live there.
The thought of Benedicte growing up with Henrik’s sister stopped her in her tracks and she had to support herself against a street lamp. Nausea welled up in her. What if Henrik found someone else? Anything would be better than having Benedicte grow up with her aunt.
She walked over to the wharf and stood there looking out over the dark water. She wanted to cry but couldn’t. She hadn’t cried since that first evening, when she sat on the edge of Benedicte’s bed and stroked her hair. Footsteps in the gravel, away somewhere. Approaching. She couldn’t face turning round.
23
Friday 12 October
RITA CALLED HIM at 3.15.
– You remember I’m leaving early today, Axel?
He’d forgotten.
– Hasn’t Cecilie Davidsen come yet?
– No, you’ve got no one waiting. The only one left now is Solveig Lundwall, three thirty.
– Davidsen didn’t call?
– Not that I know of.