“We shouldn’t have done that,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t right.”
“Were you thinking about your girlfriend?”
Christian didn’t reply.
“I’m not asking anything from you.”
“It’s all so complicated,” he said. “My girlfriend… I’ve got to talk to her, but… I always hoped things would be straightforward. That’s all I ever wanted. But now…”
“Welcome to the world,” said Kathrine.
He said he would write her an e-mail, and she repeated that she wasn’t asking for anything from him. He kissed her on the cheeks, and she asked him, and maybe that was a mistake, but she just had to ask, did he like her at all, a little bit at least. Yes, he said, but now I have to go. I’ll write you. Soon.
The train had stopped only briefly in Kolding, it had gone on, and two and a half hours later it was at its final destination — Copenhagen. There was just time for Kathrine to buy a ticket and a cup of coffee, and then she was already sitting in the train to Stockholm. From there, she would go on to Narvik, and take the Hurtig Line for the last stretch. She didn’t have much money left.
When she reached Stockholm at four o’clock, it was dark already. She found an Internet café near the station. It was a bare room in a community center, with a few computers standing on long tables. Most of them were occupied by youngsters, who were playing a game. They proceeded, heavily armed, down a subterranean passage, and shot at everything that moved. It was dark. The changing light from the screens lit up the intent faces, which sometimes convulsed with shock or rage.
Kathrine checked her e-mail. She had been gone for almost two weeks, but there was very little in her mailbox. A pretty bland greeting from Morten on the day of her departure. Would she like to have coffee sometime. Some junk mail. Christian hadn’t written yet. Kathrine thought about writing him, then she let it go. She called up the home page of the village, and its Web camera. At 30-second intervals, the pictures emerged, always the same view from the town hall across the square to the post office and the Nils H. Nilsen fish factory. In the background the Elvekrog, and on the foot of the slope on the left, various houses and huts. Once, someone came out of the Elvekrog, the open door made a pale area on the screen and a blurry shadow, only a few pixels big. Kathrine looked at it more closely, and started to see other, barely discernible shadows, the inhabitants of the village. Then she started seeing shadows all over, as if the whole village had turned out onto the square to wave to her, but that was a delusion, a flickering, maybe it was snowing. The camera wasn’t very light-sensitive, and the image resolution was too low.
Kathrine read the latest village news. British journalists on visit to Nils H. Nilsen’s plant, she read. Leather-stitching course in community center, soccer juniors triumph in Vadso.
She thought of Morten, sitting in his office, writing his little articles. He had made himself some coffee with his electrical immersion heater, had wondered whether he should go to the Elvekrog tonight, had looked up what was on TV. He had gone shopping on his lunch break, left his shopping at home, and managed to be back at work by two. On the town hall stairway there was a relief map of the Arctic territories, with the North Pole at the center.
Did Morten think about her at all? Another person disappeared, he wrote, a strange case. A young woman, a customs inspector by profession, well liked by all, with whom I spent a night, has disappeared, without leaving word.
What had she expected? Maybe Morten hadn’t even noticed she was gone. The village might be small, but one could easily go several weeks without seeing someone. What about Thomas? Had he reported her as missing? And did he miss her? Did she miss him, her mother, Randy?
If someone was missing her, if someone was worried about her, it should be an easy matter to follow her traces. You won’t find me, she had written on Thomas’s note, but the Hurtig route would keep a manifest of its passengers, or you could ask the stewards, or the captains. Harald would be able to supply a description. And she had shown her passport around, and in Paris she had taken out the last of the money from her account. She had read thrillers, she knew people left traces unless they were very canny and experienced. And she hadn’t been canny. She had known that no one would come looking for her. She was a free woman, who gave a damn where she was anyway. You won’t bother looking for me, that’s what she should have written on Thomas’s note.
She logged onto a chatroom, but there were just a few crazies there, swapping perverted fantasies under assumed names. They must feel so pathetic, sitting in their living rooms, Kathrine thought. Their wives are asleep next door, and they’re firing their dirty imaginings into the ether. I wouldn’t like to meet them on the street at night, she thought, I suppose it’s better if they lie and pretend to be decent people.
Kathrine thought about Randy, who had spent an afternoon as a deer. A game. She thought of the masks she had worn as a little girl, and of the masked balls at the Elvekrog. The sweat running down into your eyes, and your vision impaired by the narrow slits. Thomas had once come home with a pig mask, but he hadn’t put it on. Kathrine imagined him in it. She looked into the narrow gap between the face and the mask, and she saw Thomas laughing uncertainly in the shadow of the other face, saw his pupils dart this way and that. She saw him standing alone in the lit-up room. She watched him from next door, the door was just ajar. He was standing there, naked but for the mask, with his upper body leaning back slightly. He grunted once or twice, first softly, then louder. Then he got down on all fours and crept around the room, and snuffled at the radiators, the furniture, the carpets. She saw him without a mask. Emerging from the bathroom, turning off the light, running to bed with short little steps, slipping under the covers next to her. She pushed the covers back. I want to see you. And all at once, Thomas had turned into a naked woman. He jumped out of bed, and ran off. He was an old woman, his skin was wrinkled, his hair white as snow. Stay here, she called after him. She got up. Thomas had vanished. All the doors in the apartment were open, the front door opened onto a snowy landscape. But it wasn’t her apartment, and not her village.
Kathrine gave a start. A window had opened on the screen.
“You have a personal message from harrypotter,” she read, “on your breasts are two fornicating frogs, two more frogs are fornicating on your thighs…”
She closed all the windows, paid, and left. The train to Narvik had left a quarter of an hour ago.
Kathrine ran through the streets of Stockholm. It was cold and rainy. People were clustered in front of the window of a television shop, watching a soccer game. Kathrine drank a coffee, and ate a hamburger. It was her first time in a McDonald’s. She liked it. It was bright and clean, and all the surfaces were laminated, as they were in the room at the fishermen’s refuge. Easy to clean.
In the corridor of the fishermen’s home there was a map that showed all the missions up and down the Norwegian coast, clean, bright buildings, well heated, and easily washable. All the rooms were the same. The heating was electric, meals were served at the same time, the food wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad either. And Svanhild took care of everything and smiled, if you asked a question. She wore a white coat like the workers in the fish factory, and she always had a rag in her hand. When she came to the table after the meal, to ask if it had been all right, she wiped her cloth over the table, and when you went to the register to pay, and exchanged a few words with her, she wiped her cloth over the counter, back and forth, without looking. Often Svanhild didn’t say anything at all, and just wiped. Wiping was her language, it could mean anything at all.