But Line wouldn’t want to be on her own in the house all night. She’d always been afraid of the dark, ever since she was little.
She was just too proud to admit it now.
And Mum wasn’t conscious. Perhaps I could go in early in the morning and see to her then?
I’d be needing strength for the two of us.
I heard the sound of a vehicle coming up the track from the road. I went and opened the door, and watched as the ambulance crew got out, took a stretcher from the back and came toward me, the reflective bands on their uniforms faintly luminous in the light from the windows.
VIBEKE
Åse woke up at the crack of dawn, standing cheerfully in her crib at first, hands gripping the bars, but since I took my time, having already been up at four o’clock to feed her, after which I’d lain awake hoping she would quickly go back to sleep again, she soon began to scream, and then to wail.
Helge stirred beside me.
“What time is it?” he mumbled at first. And then: “For goodness’ sake, can’t you see to her?”
I put my hand on his chest, pressed my cheek to his, which was rough with stubble, and kissed his throat.
“Happy birthday, old man,” I whispered.
He opened his eyes and turned his face sleepily toward me.
“Oh, I’d forgotten,” he said, reaching out his hand and ruffling my hair. “Thanks. What time did you say it was?”
“I didn’t. But it’s half past five.”
“Oh God,” he said.
“You go back to sleep. I’ll see to her. It’s your day today.”
He turned over and pressed his head into the pillow, bending his neck back as far as he could, and in a matter of seconds his breathing settled and his mouth fell open.
I got up, taking my nightgown and putting it on as I went over to Åse’s crib in the corner.
She reached her arms up toward me, her teddy in one hand.
“You certainly woke me up early today,” I said, lifting her up to sit on my hip. She put her head to my shoulder and dug her little hand into my back.
“You’re such a good little girl, Åse,” I said, and kissed her on the forehead. “Do you want to go downstairs?”
“Nn,” she said, meaning yes. Nn could also mean no, but the intonation then was different, rising instead of falling.
My phone. I’d need my phone.
I went over to the side of the bed and picked it up off the nightstand.
His sleeping position looked so uncomfortable, but it was the only way he could sleep, I’d learned. With his head tipped back as far as it would go.
Perhaps it was to give easier passage to sleep’s dark cloud, for he always fell asleep so abruptly. And slept so soundly that I doubted he’d ever actually seen me sleep.
“Daddy’s asleep,” I said softly to Åse, who stared at him as she sucked on her pacifier.
“Nn,” she said, squirming then in my grasp, wanting to move on.
I took her with me into the bathroom and put her down on the floor while I sat down to pee. She toddled over to the bath, peered over the side, then squatted down to pick up the toys that had been left on the floor, before throwing them one by one into the tub.
“Bang!” I said.
She looked at me and smiled. It warmed my heart.
Downstairs, I opened the door onto the terrace so that she could go in and out as she pleased, then got some coffee on the go and turned the radio on. The sun hadn’t come up yet, but the sky was bright and the air outside unbelievably warm.
With a cup of coffee in my hand, I stood looking out over the rooftops toward the fjord below, the fells beyond. Åse trundled her big ladybug trolley back and forth over the slate flooring. Her diaper hung heavily between her little legs and I went and got a clean one from the bathroom, picked a light blue cotton dress out of the tumble dryer so as not to disturb Helge upstairs, laid Åse down on the sofa and changed her.
On the radio they were talking about the new celestial phenomenon that had appeared out of nowhere the evening before. An expert from the university was explaining about supernovas. His voice was eager and proud; he knew what he was talking about, and at last his moment had arrived.
“Here we are, my little lovely,” I said as I carried her over to the high chair, took a yogurt from the fridge and began to feed her. At first she sat quietly, opening her mouth when the spoon arrived, swallowing and then opening again while looking into my eyes the whole time. There was such an unfathomable warmth and trust in her eyes, I thought, and such openness. Not a shadow, not a cloud.
“Hello there,” I said. “What are you thinking now, I wonder?”
Suddenly she shouted and waved her arm in the air. Her attention had shifted to something behind me.
I turned round to see what it was.
“Aha!” I said. “You want your own spoon, is that it?”
“Nn,” she said.
I got one out of the drawer and handed it to her. She clutched it tight and proceeded to make some unsuccessful prods into the yogurt pot, before losing patience and grizzling loudly in frustration. I held her wrist to guide her hand, but she was having none of it.
“Rrraaaaa!” she wailed.
Let go, Mummy, it meant.
When finally she managed to get the spoon in the pot, she could only flip a big dollop of yogurt onto my chest. And before I could stop her, she picked up the whole pot in her hand and threw it to the floor.
She looked at me, her eyes inquiring and goading at the same time.
“Do you want some bilberries?” I said.
“DAAA!” she shouted.
I tipped some into a bowl and put it down in front of her. She picked them up one after another between her index finger and thumb, putting them into her mouth with the utmost concentration and without a sound.
“They’re good, aren’t they?” I said, licking the finger I’d used to remove the yogurt from my nightgown, before fetching the cloth and wiping the floor by her chair, rinsing the plastic pot and dropping it in the bin for recycling. I poured myself some more coffee and drank it standing in the light from the modular skylighting as I checked my schedule on my phone. I was supposed to be working from home today, but that was only a ruse, the real plan being to get things ready for Helge’s birthday. He’d said he wanted no fuss, no guests, no party—we’d booked a trip to Rome at the weekend to celebrate quietly on our own—but this was his sixtieth, and this time there’d be no wangling his way out.
I’d joined forces with Tore, his brother, and we’d invited fourteen people round for this evening. Drinks on the terrace, osso buco, his favorite, for dinner—one of the chefs from Sjølyst, his restaurant of choice, was coming in the afternoon to get started—and then to round everything off a specially made cake, not of the spectacular kind, but a regular soft sponge cake his mother always used to serve on his birthdays when he was growing up, and which I was going to make as soon as he got off to work.
Most things were already prepared. But I still had to buy flowers, wine, spirits, fruit and mineral water, pick up his present from the picture framer, iron the tablecloth and the napkins, set and decorate the table, and drive Åse up to my mum’s—all the myriad little things that always had to be done before any party, and for most of the day I’d have Åse with me, as well as having to remember to reply to some important e-mails and make a couple of phone calls.
I ought to give a speech, too.
I’d have to think about what I was going to say as the day went on.
All these things gave me such pleasure, and had done so for some time already. I obviously enjoyed conspiring and keeping secrets. Perhaps because it was so far removed from my nature?
I could hardly wait to see his face when he came home and realized he was being celebrated, and in style.
Åse was s
crutinizing me and so I put my phone away, lifted her out of her chair and sat her down on the floor, took her bowl and put it in the dishwasher, picked up my coffee and, seeing her toddle onto the terrace, followed her outside.
The ridges of the fells to the east were an orange glow. Not long after, the first rays came spearing over.
At Joar’s fortieth, his wife had given a speech in which for some reason she’d decided to say how things were between them. None of the guests had known quite how to react; discomfort spread, people looked at the floor, exchanged glances, and afterward the meal had continued in silence, broken only by the clinking of cutlery on plates. Forty was when you met yourself in the doorway and could take stock one last time, before it was too late to change direction. It was an age of truth, no matter how unpleasant. But a celebration wasn’t the place! A celebration was about the good things, the broad, sweeping lines in life that were so dominant as to exclude anything bad. For the bad things were always so petty.
Not that I had anything bad to say about Helge.
He was obsessed with his work, yes, and indifferent about things that didn’t interest him, which was to say everyday life, yet always well meaning. Self-absorbed. Energetic. Stubborn in certain areas, weak in others. Flush with an unacknowledged fear of aging.
But none of this said anything about who he was.
He was the kind of person you didn’t want to see leave a room, no matter how many other people were there. A person who said things you’d never thought of before. Someone you wanted to be near.
I looked at Åse. She was sitting quite still, staring at something in front of her. Prodding it, whatever it was, with her finger.
I got up.
“What have you got there?” I said, bending over her.
Five ladybugs were crawling around on the slate flooring.
“Oh, how lovely!” I said. “Ladybugs!”
“Nn,” she said.
“Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home, we used to sing when I was little,” I said, nudging one onto my finger and letting it crawl there for a moment before standing up and flicking it over the railing. Immediately, it opened its little wings and drifted away on the air.
“There, she flew away,” I said.
Only then did I see that there were lots of them. Twenty, thirty, at least. Some of them were settled on the railing, others on the tiles, while others simply flew about.
How strange.
“Look, Åse,” I said, and lifted her up.
Now that I’d become aware of them, I saw still more. All the dots that were filling the air would be ladybugs too. There was a whole swarm on its way.
At the same moment, they began to settle all around us.
“Daa!” said Åse, flapping her hands in glee.
The tiles were alive with them all of a sudden. A few landed on Åse too, crawling on her dress and in her hair, and instantly three appeared on my nightgown. I brushed them away as I endeavored to take Åse back inside without stepping on them, but it was impossible, there were so many now that they crunched under my bare feet as I retreated toward the open door.
I slid it shut behind me and put Åse down carefully, picking the ladybugs out of her hair, brushing them from her dress onto the floor, where they began to crawl about with the others that had managed to get in.
Outside, the terrace floor was now covered with them. The glass door and the big windows were almost alive.
I felt sick.
“What a lot of nice ladybugs,” I said, Åse sitting on her haunches to stare at them as they crawled around on the parquet. “But let’s go and put the television on, shall we? Then Mummy can do some tidying here.”
I found the remote on the sofa and switched the TV on, lifted Åse up and scrolled to the kids’ programs, selecting an episode of Teletubbies, which she loved, and as soon as the sun with the baby’s face rose up on the big screen on the wall and she was fully immersed, I hurried back into the kitchen and got out the dustpan and brush.
It felt so unpleasant to be sweeping up living creatures as if they were crumbs, but it was even worse to have them crawling about the living-room floor. Strangely, they offered no resistance, attempting not to fly or even get out of the way, but lying still on the dustpan as I carried them through the room to the kitchen window, which I opened with my free hand before scattering them into the air outside.
Behind me, Helge came down the stairs.
“No need to do the cleaning on my account!” he said.
He hadn’t put his glasses on and his face looked oddly exposed, his eyes innocent, as if somehow they weren’t yet used to the world.
“Happy birthday,” I said, going toward him.
He kissed me lightly on the mouth.
“Do you have to keep reminding me?” he said. “It’s a dreadful day!”
“You’re a man in the prime of life,” I said. “What could be better than that?”
He laughed.
“That’s the worst euphemism I’ve ever heard.”
“Have you looked outside?” I said. “On the terrace? There are thousands of ladybugs out there.”
He turned and walked toward the door at the other end of the room.
“Good Lord,” he said. “That’s amazing!”
“I get an end-of-the-world sort of feeling,” I said.
“Nonsense,” he said. “They’re just swarming, that’s all.”
“Why would they do that?”
“They’re looking for food or somewhere to see out the winter, I imagine.”
“How come I’ve never seen it before, then?” I said.
He shrugged.
“Have you?” I said.
“Seen it before?” he said.
I nodded.
He shook his head.
“So how do you know it’s natural, then?”
“Insects swarm. The ladybug is an insect.”
He turned to where Åse was sitting motionless, staring at the television as she sucked unremittingly on her pacifier, then went over to her and lifted her up.
“Hello, my lovely one!” he said, and tossed her into the air.
She started crying.
A shadow passed over his face.
“Nothing can drag her away from Teletubbies once she’s settled down with it,” I said quickly. “She won’t have it if I try to move her.”
“It’s all right,” he said.
He put her down again, and at once she was quiet.
“Have you had breakfast yet?” he said, looking at me as he absently ruffled her hair.
“I was waiting for you,” I said.
“Do you mind if I go for a little run first?”
“On your sixtieth birthday?”
“Especially on my sixtieth birthday.”
“It’s your day,” I said with a smile. “Anyway, it suits me fine. I can make some breakfast while you’re gone. What would you like? Eggs? Omelet?”
“Porridge,” he said. “But you should make something nice for yourself.”
* * *
—
I first met Helge at a taxi rank. I’d been to London and come back on an evening flight. Normally, I’d have taken the shuttle service into town, but work was paying, so I’d thought I might as well take a taxi with it being so late.
It was raining, there were no taxis, and the only other person waiting was a tall, slim man with an umbrella in one hand and a briefcase in the other.
I’d recognized him straightaway. It was Helge Bråthen, the architect. He was often on TV and in the newspapers, and there’d even been a documentary made about him which I’d seen.
A lone taxi pulled into the rank. He folded his umbrella and gave it a shake, and when the taxi stopped in front of him, he opened the door and got in. Only then did he appear to notice me.
“Where are you going?” he said.
“Into town,” I said.
“We can share, if you like? Save you standing here waiting.”
“Thanks, that’s very kind of you,” I said, and went round and got in the other side.
He sat looking at his mobile, and I checked mine for any messages. At exactly the same moment, we each put them away and looked out of our respective windows.
He didn’t seem to notice the synchronicity.
The windscreen wipers moved rhythmically, soporifically from side to side. The wet surfaces gleamed in the headlights and street lighting. Where the light petered out, the darkness was completely impenetrable.
“You’re interested in art, then?” he said.
I looked at him in surprise.
Then I realized. The tote bag in my lap, from the Tate.
“You could say,” I said, and smiled. “How about you?”
I saw no reason to appeal to his ego, which I assumed was big enough to begin with, and made no suggestion that I knew who he was.
“Oh, you know,” he said, looking at me through his round, black-framed glasses. “You could say. I ask because I saw you at the Blake exhibition in London yesterday,” he went on. “It was you, wasn’t it? Unless I’m much mistaken?”
I nodded.
“Did you enjoy it?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m fond of Blake. The exhibition on the whole was a bit overwhelming, though, I thought. Too much, in a way. Not enough space around the pictures. So they died a bit for me.”
“I agree,” he said. “The manuscripts were wonderful, though, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I said.
We fell silent again. I was glad of the lull, not feeling particularly inclined to chat, especially with someone I didn’t know. I must have signaled it, because he didn’t speak again until we approached the center of town and he asked me where I wanted to be dropped off.
Apart from mentioning it at work the next day, that I’d shared a taxi with Helge Bråthen, I gave no further thought to the encounter. I certainly wasn’t looking for a new relationship. Marcus and I had only split up a few months before, and although that had mostly been my own initiative I was still feeling low about it, because I still cared for him a lot. And then there was my exhibition. Properly speaking, I was far too young and inexperienced to be in charge of such an ambitious undertaking, the museum’s most far-reaching exhibition in many years, but the concept had been mine and I’d done much of the groundwork myself, the thought being precisely that it would be harder then for them to task anyone else with the curation—if they even ended up liking the idea.
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