It was an A-frame building, furnished minimally. The large street-level floor was dominated by a wood-burning stove, with neat stacks of logs placed alongside the stone wall. A long couch and a hide rug were in front of the stove. There was a kitchen and bathroom. Everything was clean, tidy, functional.
The upper floor was a mezzanine, attained by narrow wooden steps. Beneath the sharply-angled roof a large, thick mattress lay on the floor, with quilts and bolsters folded neatly on the top.
Two hours later we had the place habitable. The stove was alight, filling the house with the sweet scent of burning birch, and the water jacket around the firebox was piping heat around the house. Alvasund warmed up some canned soup and we drank it sitting together on the couch, staring into the glowing fire.
We had found some maps of the fjord which showed that Ørsknes was a distance inland from the sea, with another fishing settlement called Omhuuv lying further along the same shore, closer to the mouth of the fjord. A larger-scale street map revealed that it was probably not going to take long to explore the town. There were just the two main streets, with a compact maze of side streets like the one where the house was situated. The harbour and wharf buildings ran for most of the length of the waterfront. We could hear the winches and cranes, even through the stone and doubly insulated wooden walls of the house.
We walked around the town before sunset, wrapped up against the icy north-east wind. It seemed to gain strength as it passed along the narrowing fjord. Alvasund showed me the building where she believed Yo had kept her studio — it was now a net store — but many decades had passed since the artist had been there. Her studio could have been in any one.
As we walked back towards the house we spotted a restaurant close to the wharves. The place was open, so we ate dinner there. Some of the other customers looked at us curiously a few times, but there was no hostility in their interest. Alvasund and I were learning to relax with each other, and several times we stopped talking and sat and ate in silence, glancing warmly at each other across the table.
Afterwards, we returned through the now dark streets, looking for the house, hearing our own footsteps echoing in the deserted streets. We glimpsed dim lights behind the curtained or shuttered windows of many of the houses, but there was little other outward sign of occupation. It was starting to snow, a thin, cold downfall, blown along on the turbulent Goornak. We leaned against each other, holding on as we slithered along the increasingly slippery paths.
I was assuming nothing about what might happen when we went to bed, but the knowledge that there was only one bed in the house had quietly illuminated the evening for me. I could not forget Alvasund’s unexpected laughter when we first discussed this trip, the smiling implication of us travelling together, and the easy affection we had shared in the restaurant.
But the night before, when we stopped at the hotel in the mountains, had been a surprise if not a disappointment. The moment I switched off the car’s ignition Alvasund had leapt out and run through the swirling snowstorm into the building. She returned with the news that we could stay, and started pulling her bags out of the car. Once inside the building I discovered we were to be in separate rooms, but I did not ask, and Alvasund did not tell me, if this was at her own request or if those were the only ones available. That is how I had spent the previous night, comfortably enough, warmly enough, but alone in a single narrow bed.
Now we were in Ørsknes, in a house where it was plain we would be sharing a bed. Once inside the house, with our warm outer clothes removed and the fire stirred up into a burst of new radiance, we made some tea. We sat together, as before, staring at the fireglow. Alvasund had picked up a tourist guide in the restaurant so we now knew where the Yo tunnel was located and how we could find it. We made plans to visit it the next day.
With the tea finished Alvasund stood up quickly, said she would like a shower and asked me if I wanted to take mine first or after her. I opted to go first.
Afterwards, I went up the narrow steps, crawled on to the mattress, and pulled the quilt around me. I was full of anticipation, my senses tingling, my appetite and readiness for her growing. As soon as I was in the bed she came up the steps to join me. She was still in her clothes and stood where I could see her. She undressed with her back towards me, stripping unsensationally to her underwear, then pulled on a wrap and went downstairs to the cubicle. I could hear the water flowing through the pipes, the shower running below, the sound of the splashing changing as she moved around. I stared at the small pile of clothes she had left on the floor beside our bed.
After a silence I heard her do something to the wood-burning stove, then she turned out the lights on the ground floor and came back up to the bed. She was wearing the wrap, with her hair hanging damply about her shoulders.
She kneeled forward on the edge of the mattress, pulled out the bolster from where it had been laid, and placed it along the bed, down the middle, dividing it in two.
‘You understand, Torm, don’t you?’ She was patting down the long, heavy pillow, making sure it extended the full length of the bed.
‘I think so,’ I said, kicking the thing where it had rolled against me. ‘I can see what you are doing. Is that what I have to understand?’
‘Yes. Don’t touch me. Imagine there is a sheet of glass between us.’
She towelled her hair briefly, then slipped off the wrap. For a moment she was naked, standing there, within my reach, but she was already crawling forward, sliding under the quilt beside me. The bolster lay between us.
She turned out the light, pulling on the cord that dangled from the rafter above.
I turned it on again and sat up. I leaned over towards her. She was already lying with the quilt pulled tight up to her face. Her eyes were open.
‘Torm —’
I said, ‘I wasn’t assuming anything, but you’re acting as if you think I was.’
‘It’s obvious. What you’re expecting.’
‘Everything we did today — was I wrong?’
‘We’re just friends, Torm. That’s how I want it to be. If you assume that, that’s OK.’
‘What if I want that to change? Or you do?’
‘Then we’ll both know. Please, for now just treat me as if we have glass between us. Everything is visible, but nothing can be reached. This was something I learned at college, about an audience and a stage. There’s an invisible wall between the actors and the audience. You look and you see, but there’s no real interaction.’
I said, protesting, ‘A stage effect isn’t the same thing at all!’
‘I know. But for now, just for now, for tonight.’
‘You want me to be your audience.’
‘I suppose so, yes.’
I thought about that. She suddenly seemed to me rather naïve, adapting a concept some drama teacher had explained, but applying it inappropriately. I reached up and turned off the light, aroused and annoyed. Moments later I switched it on again. She had not moved and her eyes were still open. She blinked.
‘You say I can look at you.’
‘Yes.’
‘Let me look now.’
Amazingly she smiled at that and without another word pushed down the quilt to expose herself. I raised myself on my elbow again, stared at her lying there so close to me, her neat, compact body, quite bare, frankly naked to me. She kicked the quilt completely away with one of her feet, then moved slightly, revealing everything of herself.
Almost at once it felt intrusive and somehow pointless to be looking at her like that, so I turned away. Still she did not pull up the quilt to cover herself but I turned off the light. Moments later I felt her move under the quilt again. She fidgeted a few times and finally lay still. I tried to relax too, lying back with my head on the large soft pillow. I was breathing hard but I tried to still myself, to be calm. The bolster lay between us.