“It was while climbing. He fell. He was alone. The fall needn’t have been fatal. But he was alone.”
Harald looked much younger out of uniform. The rocks were bad here, he said, they weren’t solid. A piece of rock had broken off, and buried his son under it.
“He was eighteen. He didn’t miss anything. He did what he wanted. As for the girls…”
“I’m twenty-eight,” said Kathrine, “I don’t know if I’ve missed anything or not. What about you?”
“Forty-five.”
“Did you invite me because you knew your wife was away?”
“I wouldn’t have asked you if she’d been here.”
Harald laughed. He said he had to run a couple of errands in town. He gave Kathrine a key, and asked her if she’d be in for supper.
When Harald had gone out, Kathrine looked around the house. There was a picture of the family hanging in the hallway. The mother looked nice, the boy looked like her. The nursery no longer contained any traces of his having been there, no children’s books, no toys, nothing. It was a bright, clean room, and there were pictures on the walls that were like the pictures in hotel rooms, prints of watercolors, scenes from life in the South somewhere. Kathrine took some pictures of the empty room, she didn’t know why, and she thought, I shouldn’t be doing this.
Then she went into the kitchen to make coffee. She waited for the water to trickle through the filter. A door led from the kitchen to the garage, where there were a couple of bicycles, an ancient Volvo, and a Deepfreeze. Up on one wall were some dusty ropes and climbing harness, and a couple of battered-looking synthetic helmets. When Harald came back from town, Kathrine asked him if he did any climbing himself.
“Not anymore,” he said.
“Have you gone on climbing expeditions?”
“Sometimes.” Harald shrugged his shoulders. “We got along well. But he was a daredevil. I didn’t have any time that day. He went off by himself.”
“Did you not want to keep anything of his? Nothing?”
“What are we supposed to keep? His clothes? His books? It’s him I miss, not his things.”
Harald cooked for Kathrine. He opened a bottle of wine. It was a good evening. Harald talked about his voyages along the coastline, about the spring storms, and the tourists. In his younger days, he’d worked on container ships all over the world. He talked about exotic countries. When he asked Kathrine if she wouldn’t like to see Hong Kong or Singapore for herself, she wasn’t sure. “All those people,” she said. “And I bet there are bugs.”
“What about your mosquitoes?” said Harald, and laughed. “At least cockroaches don’t sting.”
“And did you have a girl in every port?”
“Well, it wasn’t like the Norwegian coastal line, that’s for sure,” said Harald. “Or would you go for a sailor?”
“We have a seamen’s mission. Do you know Svanhild?”
Kathrine laughed. She couldn’t imagine Svanhild as a sailor’s girl.
“I know one or two who’d have been happy with her,” said Harald, laughing as well. “She’s not the world’s greatest cook, but she can run a household when the man’s not there. She’s competent. And she has a kind heart.”
“You’re talking like an old fisherman. Like my first husband. Is your wife competent?”
“Very. Our marriage works best when I’m away. Then she can do whatever she wants.”
“And when you’re there, then she does whatever you want, is that it?”
“Then I do what she wants. She keeps an eye on me. Makes sure I don’t drink and smoke too much, or chase the girls.”
“So that’s what you like to do.”
Harald laughed, and then he stopped laughing.
“It works,” he said, and he finished his glass. “It’s all I can ask for. I know she’s got someone else.”
When Kathrine didn’t say anything, Harald went on: “She’s got a man she talks to. An analyst, a shrink, if you like. She sees him in the evenings too, how do I know what goes on there, I’m away all the time.”
Still, Kathrine didn’t say anything. Harald got a bottle of akvavit from the fridge, and a couple of glasses. He poured.
“I never asked her,” he said. “When Harald died… But why am I telling you all this?”
“Why are you telling me?” asked Kathrine. She said she was tired, and was going to bed.
When she was in the bathroom, Harald knocked on the door. She was in the shower, she shouted back. Then through the frosted glass of the shower cabinet, she saw that he’d come in. He moved about slowly and carefully. Finally he stopped. Kathrine saw him the way he must see her. She turned round, and turned the water off. Then she heard his cracked voice very close to her.
“I brought you a towel. I’m going out now.”
“OK,” she said, “thank you.”
When she emerged from the bathroom, he was sitting on the floor beside the door. He was pale, but there were little spots of red on his cheeks. He was smoking a cigarette. A column of ash fell off, and he brushed it nervously into the carpet.
“Thank you for taking me in,” said Kathrine, “I don’t know what else I would have done.”
Harald shook his head. “That’s how far gone I am. Using my dead son to try and get a woman…”
“Be quiet,” said Kathrine.
“What else have I got to offer?” said Harald. “My suffering.”
“I liked you the moment I saw you,” said Kathrine, “when we were on the bridge, and you pointed out that seal.”
Kathrine spent two days and two nights at Harald’s. On the afternoon of the third day, she took the train to Oslo. At the station, Harald asked her where she was going next.
“I’ve got a friend called Christian,” she said. “He’s Danish, lives in Aarhus. I’m going to visit him there.”
“Write to me,” said Harald. “And when you’re next in Bergen… stay with me anytime you like. With us. I’ll tell my wife about you.”
The journey from Bergen to Oslo took seven hours. The train went over innumerable bridges, through tunnels and narrow valleys, past fjords and glaciers. In Oslo, Kathrine got on the night train. She dozed in her seat, she couldn’t sleep properly. When she changed trains in Malmo, she was dead tired. Eighteen hours after leaving Bergen, she finally arrived in Aarhus. She took a bus, and rode out to Christian’s address. She was surprised to find herself in front of a single concrete apartment block.
Christian’s name wasn’t next to any of the apartments, but there was a family called Nygard who were listed. A. and K. Nygard. A man just leaving the building held the door open for Kathrine, and she took the elevator up to the fifth floor. From the elevator column, a glass door led to a long narrow corridor off which the apartments opened. Kathrine looked down at the town. She was surprised how flat and monotonous it all looked. The streets were all alike, the houses, the colors. She saw a mailman going from house to house, cars stopping at traffic lights, and then driving on.
There was a straw star hanging on the door of A. and K. Nygard’s apartment, even though Christmas was more than a month ago. Kathrine rang the bell. A woman of about fifty in a stylish dress opened the door. Something about her face reminded Kathrine of Christian, perhaps it was the watery eyes, perhaps the soft, undefined features. The woman looked at Kathrine without saying anything. Kathrine asked if a Christian Nygard lived here.
“He’s not here,” said the woman.
Kathrine asked when Christian was expected back, and the woman said she didn’t know, he was installing some machinery in France.
“I thought he was back from there.”
“We thought he would be too. But there was some problem. Something technical. He wasn’t even able to be home for Christmas.”