by Anne Holt
“No.”
“That it’s not long until May 17. To the two hundredth anniversary of the Constitution. To the most Norwegian of all Norwegian festivals. With hundreds of thousands of people in Oslo city center.”
“You’re not the only one,” he replied somberly. “You’re most certainly not the only one who has thought of that, Silje. With C4 gone adrift and people who have already demonstrated their willingness to use it, that could well be a real nightmare.”
Again Billy T.’s imagination transported him into the labyrinth from the nightmares that had begun to plague him in recent weeks. He rushed from place to place without making any headway, he felt, other than toward an increased awareness of something that simply could not be true. It just couldn’t.
Could not be allowed to be.
His car was acting up; it was as if all the spark plugs would not fire properly. Not so strange, really. His Opel was nine years old and had not been serviced in the last two. The EU check three months ago had forced him to change his brake discs, but all the other things the well-meaning mechanic had suggested would have to wait.
“Fuck!” he said, thumping the steering wheel as the car struggled up the gentle slopes past the old Aker Hospital.
At least the car did not completely die on him. Twelve minutes later, he turned into the parking lot in front of the library.
There were about ten cars spread out across the asphalt area and plenty of empty spaces. Nevertheless, he ignored the sign and parked in front of the pictogram of a wheelchair, right beside a ramp leading to the entrance to the local branch of Oslo’s public library. To the side, he saw a couple of horses grazing in a paddock on this spring day, between low-rise apartment buildings and small houses. Billy T. thought he remembered that there was a riding school in the vicinity.
The modest entrance led into a corridor. The wall on the left was covered in a series of bulletin boards, an eclectic selection of information attached with multicolored pins. Newspaper cuttings about the battle to retain the library, and a suggestion to choose the Nordtvet Deichman Library as your local grassroots charity at Norsk Tipping, the Norwegian national lottery. A number of book reviews from the Friends of Nordtvet library. A local poet was to read poems at lunchtime in two days, he noticed, with the theme “Poetry in a Time of Terror.” The illustration on the poster showed a man aged well over sixty, with long, unkempt hair and an arrogant expression in his eyes. Not exactly a magnet for the masses, it struck Billy T., and he let his eyes wander over the rest of the bulletin board.
A mothers’ group announced the starting date for something they called Babybook, every Tuesday at noon. On Friday afternoon, there was help with homework for pupils in the first to third grades. A cat had disappeared from Gangstuveien 4: it was black, its name was Alfons, and it was sorely missed.
“Can I help you with something?” a voice asked.
Billy T. turned and looked down at a slight woman in her sixties. Her hair had gone gray in the way that blondes do as they grow older: straw-colored and without luster. She peered up at him with a quizzical smile, her hands clasped and pressed against her bosom.
“N-yes.” He paused. “Actually I’m just taking a look.”
“That’s fine. If there’s anything you’re not sure of, then by all means come over and ask. We’re here to help, you know.”
He tried to return her smile. She headed back to the counter, which was actually not a counter at all. Two desks, not even of the same height, sat side-by-side above a confusion of cables and leads.
“By the way,” he said.
She turned around again.
“I wondered . . . I’d heard you have some sort of reading group for young adults. Or for . . . I’m not quite sure, but you see I’ve heard that—”
“Aha,” she said, beaming. “ReadAndRun! First you read, and then you can run out into life. You’re probably too old, unfortunately, I think. It’s a group for people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five.”
“No, no! I’m not asking on my own behalf; I’d just like to know what it’s all about.”
She came closer. Her sensible shoes clicked softly on the linoleum, and she was wearing a checked skirt that stopped just above her knees.
“ReadAndRun is our own invention!” she said enthusiastically, tucking her strawlike hair behind her ear with her left hand. “In this part of the city, as is well known, we have a number of young people who . . . haven’t quite grasped the joy of reading, you might say. They usually drop out early from the school system, and we all know what that can entail.”
She gave him a meaningful look.
“ReadAndRun, or RAR, as we usually call it, is an initiative to get these young people moving again. Out into life, as they often have the potential to do, if they just get a little push. I must admit I’m quite proud of it: we’ve had good results. And it costs so little. Next to nothing in fact, since my salary is already being paid and the books are here already too.”
She opened her arms wide.
It crossed his mind that there were not so very many of them, as he followed her suggestion and looked around. It was the smallest library he had seen. On the other hand, he had to admit, he had not set foot in a library very often.
The librarian’s eyes were blue and ringed by friendly crow’s-feet. All the same, it seemed as if her body language did not quite match the impression of benevolence and enthusiasm that she was obviously trying to project. There was something watchful about the way she conducted herself. In addition, pronounced wrinkles pulled her mouth down into a skeptical, almost sullen expression that did not tally with the cheerfulness in her bright voice.
“That’s great,” he said. “Sounds good.”
“Maybe you have a son who . . . Well, yes, girls are also extremely welcome, that goes without saying. But it’s almost exclusively boys who want to come. Strangely enough, you might say, since it’s girls and women who read books.”
“Yes,” Billy T. said. “I have a son.”
“If you come with me, we’ll take a look to see when there might be a vacancy. How old is he?”
“Twenty-two,” Billy T. said, following in her wake. “But you’ve misunderstood, I—”
“We’re not at all unused to parents being the ones to take the initiative,” she said in a confidential tone as she skirted around the seemingly makeshift counter and brought out a ring binder. “Even though they’re over eighteen, we still feel responsibility for them. Believe me—I’ve got two grown-up sons myself. Your responsibility never ends.”
“The point is that my son—”
“Here’s a space! Actually this term is in full swing, but I’m starting up a small extra group in three weeks. A while to wait, but would that suit?”
The slight figure looked even smaller behind the low counter. He was aware of towering above her. Her hands were quick and nervous, and continually met above her heart in a gesture of appeal.
“What’s his name?” she asked before he had answered her previous question.
“Knut,” Billy T. said, to his own surprise. “And he knows someone who attended here earlier.”
“Knut what?”
“Knut Pettersen.”
“Knut Pettersen,” she repeated brightly, and added his name to a handwritten list. “Date of birth?”
“Why do you need his date of birth?”
For a moment she looked up at him, with her pen poised above the paper. Then she gave a brief smile, put down the pen, and closed the folder.
“I can get that from him when he comes,” she said, placing a brochure in front of Billy T. “This contains everything he needs to know.”
“What do you do at these meetings, actually?”
“We talk about books. About knowledge. About the value of reading. They get reading lists from us that they ought to work through in the course of the term. Both fact and fiction, although the main emphasis is on literary fiction. We also help with writing résumés and ap
plications for further and higher education. On the whole . . .”
She pushed the brochure closer to him.
“. . . we have a really nice time.”
“As I said, I know someone who used to come here earlier. A friend of Knut’s. Linus is his name. Linus Bakken.”
It could have been a figment of his imagination. Of course it might be that he was too tired, too worn out, and far too disconsolate to read people with the same sharp precision of which he had once shown himself capable. It could be wishful thinking; this tiny woman was the only thing he had to go on, to come any closer to the truth about what had happened to Linus.
It might be nothing, but he thought he saw her react to the name. The friendly eyes grew vigilant, a fraction narrower. The querulous pulled-down mouth was drawn up in a smile that seemed phony. Her hands came together again in prayer above her heart.
“Linus,” she said, coughing slightly before she produced a handkerchief from the sleeve of her cardigan to wipe her nose.
She’s gaining time, Billy T. thought. Just a few seconds, but that’s what she is doing. She needs to think it over. He hardly dared blink for fear of missing something.
“Lovely boy,” the woman said, her smile growing even broader. “He has really pulled himself together after starting here. You know him well, perhaps?”
Billy T. nodded.
“As far as I’ve heard, he’s going to retake several of his high school exams in a couple of months,” she continued. “That’s exactly what we’re aiming for. If you see him, you must say I was asking after him. He hasn’t been here for a while. Now, I really have to . . .”
She scanned the room. The library was deserted, apart from one of her colleagues nearby, a young woman in sneakers busily straightening up beside a sitting area with colorful children’s chairs.
“What did you say your name was?” Billy T. asked as he folded the brochure.
“My name?”
“Yes. I’m Arne Pettersen.” He proffered his huge hand across the counter.
“Kirsten Ranvik,” she mumbled. “Pleased to meet you.”
Her hand was cool and slightly clammy. Letting it go, Billy T. gave a fleeting smile and left. He stopped for a moment beside the bulletin boards. One announcement that he had not spotted on his way in caught his attention now:
RAR Meeting!
RAR is holding a meeting at Ceylon in Kalbakken on Friday April 25 at 7:00 p.m. Lower age limit eighteen. Free food, pay for your own drinks. Sign up here.
Seven people had signed their names on the list.
Seven Norwegian-sounding names. In a district like this, where the immigrant population was denser than in most other places in Norway and where at the very least they were a sizable percentage of young men who might need a kick to persuade them to return to the education system. Billy T. glanced at the counter in there. The woman was gone. He quickly tore the notice down from the board and stuffed it into his pocket.
Kirsten Ranvik: the name ran through his mind as he emerged to see that his car was now on its own in the parking lot.
The name told him absolutely nothing.
There was nothing she missed when life was as it was now.
Not even being able to walk again.
It would soon be midnight. Hanne Wilhelmsen was lying in bed on freshly laundered sheets with red wine in a glass balanced on her bare stomach and one finger on the stem. Nefis was by her side. An old Bruce Willis film buzzed in the background, the volume low, on TV. Ida had been asleep for a while, even though she had been in high spirits as she enjoyed some time with her mother when Nefis finally arrived home around eight o’clock. They had eaten chili that the girl had made. And ice cream.
“Missing you does me good,” Hanne said sleepily.
“I don’t really think you do,” Nefis said, smiling, as she kissed her on the shoulder. “You don’t spare me a thought when I’m away, but you are so happy to see me again that you think you’ve been missing me.”
“Whatever.”
“Do you want to hear how I did?”
“No. Not unless you’ve found someone else. I want to watch Bruce.”
Nefis lay on her side, supporting her head with her hand.
“Was it really frightening?” she asked in an undertone.
“Yes. Not for me personally, because I realized it was a distance away, you see. But it was horrible; of course it was—is—horrible that such things happen. Ida was pretty upset that night. Hardly slept at all, even though she was allowed to sleep in here. I think maybe it was a combination of the terrorist incident and discovering what I was going to start working on.”
“Why haven’t you had that damaged windowpane replaced?”
“I thought you could see to it. In fact, I think that crack is quite decorative.”
“Idiot.”
Nefis crept even closer to her and stole a swig of the wine.
“What do you honestly see in me?” Hanne asked, her eyes fixed on Bruce Willis, who was climbing down an elevator shaft with everything around him on fire.
“How many times have you asked me that?” Nefis said, a smile playing on her lips.
“A zillion.”
“I see love. Above all, I see great love.”
Hanne smiled, still without looking at her.
“I’ve really missed you,” she whispered. “Very much. It’s entirely true. And I’ve gotten to know a real oddball.”
“You? Got to know someone?”
Nefis sat up straight, swathing herself in the quilt and putting her legs into the lotus position.
“Who is it, then?”
“A policeman. Henrik is his name. Smart boy. Incredibly strange.”
“So you say!”
“Silje set him on me, in connection with these old cases I’m going to look at. First of all, I was pissed off, since I don’t need a sidekick, but in fact he’s quite interesting to talk to.”
“We must invite him to dinner,” Nefis exclaimed. “Have you really met someone you like? And can talk to? What about tomorrow?”
“Hold your horses,” Hanne said, putting her glass on the bedside table, before hauling herself up into a sitting position. “I haven’t said I’ve made friends with anyone, have I? But do you know something?”
“Yes?”
“It’s grown very much worse in recent days.”
“What has?”
“You know. The attitude. Toward Muslims. After the terrorist attack. Fortunately Ida isn’t particularly interested in the news yet, so she doesn’t see the online comments. I hope so, anyway.”
Sighing, Nefis extricated herself from the quilt in order to get up.
“Where are you going?” Hanne asked.
“To fetch my iPad.”
“No. Lie down again.”
Nefis hesitated momentarily before complying. Hanne switched off the TV, drank the dregs of the wine, and dimmed the light as far as it would go.
“Come here,” she said, raising one arm.
Nefis’s skin was cool as she snuggled up to her.
“Much worse?”
Hanne nodded and held her closer.
They remained lying like that for a long time. Nefis’s weight grew softer and her breathing more regular.
“Hey,” Hanne whispered.
“Mm.”
“Why is it so difficult?”
“What?”
“Why can’t Norwegian Muslims—the ones like you and certainly many of the ones in NCIN—just say it like it is?”
“Say what?”
“That you’re not Muslims in the religious sense of the word. That you don’t believe. That, deep down, you’re exactly like us, just with slightly odder names and more attractive colors.”
“I do say it,” Nefis said, smiling.
“But only to me. And Ida. And a few friends.”
“It’s no one else’s business.”
“No, but—”
Nefis scrambled up again.
&nb
sp; “It’s different for us,” she said, sweeping Hanne’s hair away from her forehead.
“What is it that’s so different? Why can’t you say it to your parents, for example? That you’re . . . lapsed, so to speak?”
“Because it would absolutely hurt them.”
“More than . . . me, sort of thing?”
“More than that I’m lesbian, yes. Mother and Father are enlightened people. Modern, in many ways. But Islam is . . .”
She gave a lingering yawn.
“Do we have to talk about this just now, Hanna?”
After all these years, Nefis spoke almost impeccable Norwegian, but she had never learned to say “Hanne.”
“We don’t have to.”
“For many of us, it’s also a matter of our faith still being intact in a sense. Deep inside. I fact, I would guess that’s how it is for most people. Not in their daily lives, not for everyone, but when it comes to the crunch, it will be difficult to get entirely rid of a god you have grown up with as omnipresent.”
“It’s like that for Christians, too.”
“Sure.”
“To me it seems a bit . . .”
The lamp on the bedside table made Nefis’s hair shine. She always wore it up, and Hanne loved the moment in the evening when, with supple, practiced movements, she unpinned it and let it cascade down her back. Now she took hold of a thick lock of hair and twirled it around her hand.
“Spineless?” Nefis suggested.
“Yes.”
“You’re wrong. It’s a matter of being considerate. It’s a matter of taking care of your own. Not everyone can be like you, Hanna. Luckily not everyone is just as lacking in a childhood. Just as detached from their own history. Most of us are part of a bigger tapestry. We don’t want it to fall to pieces. We look both backward and forward in our lives. We are fond of people. Of lots of people—not just two, like you.”
“Touché,” Hanne whispered and let go of Nefis’s hair.
“Give us a generation or two.”
Hanne did not respond. She struggled to lie on her side and had to use the substantial metal rail mounted at the top of the headboard for support.
“Of course,” she murmured. “Anyway, I don’t care. As long as you are here. And Ida. And preferably no one else.”