In the village, people didn’t know much about Svanhild. She came from the south of Sweden, that was agreed, and sometimes she told stories about that, stories in which she herself didn’t play any part. It was as though she didn’t have a life, had never had any life. She was very gentle, and she had a beautiful voice. If you asked her long enough, she would sing the sad songs of her homeland, and a big hush fell over the restaurant.
Only once had Kathrine seen Svanhild be vehement, and that was when a couple of seamen had brought beer into the fishermen’s refuge. Svanhild had preached to them about the evils of alcohol, and when they laughed at her, she had turned them out.
She had never married. From time to time, directly or obliquely, a seaman would make a proposal to her, in jest or otherwise, and she would make a joke, and everyone laughed. When the seaman blushed and stammered, she would lay her hand on his arm and say, you need a young woman who’ll have babies to occupy her while you’re away at sea.
Kathrine followed a group of rowdy and laughing young people to a bar. The music was loud, and it was dark. Kathrine sat down at the bar, next to a woman who had her back to her. If someone looked at her, she smiled. But no one came and spoke to her. All the men she liked were with women, or in groups of other men. She smoked a cigarette, drank a beer. All around her there was laughter. The people knew each other, they often came here. And of course they didn’t look at Kathrine, or just fleetingly, the way they might look into a shop window when the shop is closed, and move on. It wouldn’t make the slightest difference if I wasn’t here, thought Kathrine, and she smiled. She could smile in such a way that it looked as if she didn’t care. I have to go back, she thought, I have no other choice. Take a job in Stockholm. Start a new life in Stockholm, or what people call a new life. But she was even more afraid of a new life than she was of her old one. Look for a job, an apartment. And where would she live until then? There was no fishermen’s refuge here. Maybe the Salvation Army, a home for young women. But she wasn’t a young woman anymore either. She was twice married, she had a husband and a child. She had to return.
Someone passed her a joint. She had never tried hash. Not with my job, she sometimes said. But she wasn’t working now, and she felt sad, and perhaps a little curious. She took a drag, and was going to pass it on. But no one was sitting next to her, and so she took another drag, and then gave the joint back to the woman who had given it to her. The woman smiled and said, hey.
The music in the bar was lovely. There was something glassy about it, and the rhythm seemed to fit with Kathrine’s heartbeat, her breathing, which kept accelerating. She made herself breathe more slowly, and before long she had the feeling she was only breathing out, or in and out simultaneously. It was as though she’d left the room, and was passing through a landscape, hovering over a landscape of sounds. When she shut her eyes, she saw brightly colored patterns that opened out like delicate fans or flowers. The patterns were yellow and purple and hemmed with black lines. They looked like gentle hills. It was beautiful, and Kathrine felt at ease. She opened her eyes and looked through a long tunnel or pipe. Someone had rolled up the carpet, with everything that was on it. Workmen had rolled it up, and carried it down to the street. Far away from her she saw people moving, getting up. But the music wasn’t finished yet. Why did they turn out the lights, she wondered, and she closed her eyes again. She was rolled up inside the carpet, and slowly the cold got to her. The colors were gone. It was dark, and Kathrine was shivering.
“Where d’you live?” a man asked her. The door was open.
“Nowhere,” she said, “I’m traveling.” She looked at her watch. “I’ve got a train to catch.”
She went to the station. Her mind cleared in the cold air. She was cold, but she was happy to be cold.
The train was already there, and she bought a ticket for a couchette from the conductor, and went into her compartment. She hoped she would be alone. One more night on a train, one more night in a couchette. Kathrine went out into the corridor, and looked out the window.
She felt sad and tired. She wanted to get back to her house and her village. She wanted peace. She wanted not to think for a while. She had seen so much in the last two weeks, so much that she had never seen before, and yet she had the feeling she hadn’t seen anything at all. That people had different faces, she had already known. She had known that there are some houses that are bigger and more beautiful than others. A thousand times a thousand makes a million, and it wasn’t necessary to go to Paris to find that out.
Hordes of downhill and cross-country skiers were walking along beside the train. They laughed and chattered. When the first of them climbed into Kathrine’s carriage, she fled into her compartment, shut the door, and drew the curtains. She heard the skiers clatter past outside. Then the door opened, and three women came in. Each had a tin of beer in her hand. They were laughing. Their ski suits smelled of mothballs.
The three women were traveling up to Narvik together, to go on a skiing holiday. They all lived in Stockholm, they explained, and they drank their beer, and they talked about their husbands or their boyfriends, who all seemed to be idiots. When they learned that Kathrine came from the Finnmark, they asked her about Narvik, and about Norwegian men. They wanted to know if there were good pubs and discos in Narvik. There’s a cinema, said Kathrine, and a library, and the three women looked at her with pitying expressions, and then spoke to her as if she were a child or handicapped person. They asked Kathrine where she lived, what her job was, if she had a boyfriend or even a husband. Kathrine said she had a child and a career, that she’d twice been married, that she was married to her second husband. At that the women were nicer to her. They introduced themselves: Inger, Johanna, and Linn. None of them had a baby, and they all worked in the same law office.
The four women got undressed. At first, Kathrine felt ashamed in front of the others, but then Johanna said something about Inger’s paunch, and the three of them started to compare bellies and thighs, and they were amazed that Kathrine was so slim, and that there was no trace of her pregnancy. It was so long ago, said Kathrine. And she got a lot of exercise in the course of her work.
“You could make more of yourself,” said Linn, who was lying on the bunk opposite Kathrine.
“My husband doesn’t care,” Kathrine said quietly. “It doesn’t make any difference.”
“That’s what you say. And anyway, you’d just be doing it for yourself.”
“I don’t want to make anything of myself,” said Kathrine.
Johanna, who was lying above them, told them to quiet down, she wanted to sleep, so that she’d be in shape for the Norwegian men.
“As if your Eirik ever gave you any peace,” said Inger and laughed, “the bull of Lulea.”
“Peace from his snoring, you mean,” said Johanna, and gave a demonstration of Eirik’s snoring. “No, honestly,” she said, “I’m dead tired.”
“Girls,” said Inger.
Linn had gotten up.
“Scoot over,” she said quietly, “or do you want to sleep?”
Kathrine slid over to the wall, and Linn crept in under the blanket next to her. Kathrine had never lain in bed with a woman. She had never had that many girlfriends, and the village was so small that there was never any reason to stay the night with one of them. You visited each other, stayed until late, but at the end of the evening you still went home.