The next time Ana saw him, it was Christmastime. She’d gone into town with Jorunn, a new friend from the academy. They sat at the bar, because a bar is the only place in Norway you can meet a man. That’s what Jorunn always said, though Ana’d never met any men there. It was always Jorunn who caught their attention. And sure enough, in five minutes flat, there were two guys from the business school standing next to Jorunn, flirting. Ana had to sit there politely and spit in her beer, playing with her cash and folding a napkin, and that was when she noticed him. Sitting at the end of the bar, with a draft beer in front of him. He looked indescribably sad. Clean-shaven, wearing a crumpled shirt, he had a cross hanging from a chain around his neck, and for a while Ana tried to catch his eye. It wasn’t easy, because he was staring at a tea light, but then Ana took two coins and a slice of lemon and arranged them on the bar so they looked like a smiley face. At first he didn’t see it, gazing into the light, but then Ana slid the coins and lemon closer, and finally he glanced up, a little afraid to start with, but when he saw the smiley face, he laughed.
His name was Isak Bringedal. He had blond hair and sharp, skeletal cheekbones, he’d studied at the art school, and he built installations out of concrete, cast bathrooms and living rooms, fillings of the negative space in apartment block stairwells, that sort of thing. Ana told him she’d seen him get his teeth into the American physicist at the lecture, and he nodded and pointed at the candle.
It’s the photons, he said. They teleport. That’s why so many strange things are happening.
Strange things?
Exactly, he said, and explained about photons, the way they interacted at long distances with no delay whatsoever, nor any intervening force. They had to be in touch through some godlike energy, he said, because the photons’ behavior was nuts. Either they were present everywhere at once, or they traveled through time. And that made Ana smile. She felt an instant fondness for the photons, which ignored the common sense of causality and place, or whatever you wanted to call it, and traveled through time—it was nice to think that even elementary particles were unstable.
What else do they do, these photons? asked Ana, but she never got an answer, because Isak had begun to cough. He thumped his chest, saying: Ugh, for Christ’s sake, it’s those fucking smokers. Come on, shall we get some fresh air?
So they wrapped themselves up in jackets and hats and scarves, and as they walked toward the art school he told her about a game he’d played once as a boy, when a Ouija board had predicted that his big sister would get juvenile arthritis. At Ana’s studio they shared two beers, then Isak shrugged his coat back on and Ana watched him vanish into the dark.
That night Ana had a nightmare about her father. She woke up all sticky with sweat, and the same thing happened a few nights running. She thought it must be the upcoming crit that was stressing her out, and who knows, maybe that’s all it was. She was presenting her latest video piece, and two minutes before the session began, Isak came creeping into the classroom. He crept the way larvae and caterpillars creep, first one half of his body, then, with a jerk, the second. He used to be a tutor at the school, and still dropped by to check out the new students. This time he wore glasses and a blazer too short in the arms, but the cross still hung around his neck. Ana waved at him and he smiled back, and for some reason it made her relax a little.
After the seminar they played chess, and Isak told her about his own crit sessions, about the students who’d sneered at his studio approach, and about the professors who’d been so scared of treading on their own toes they hadn’t dared say a word, sitting like gurus at the head of the table and letting their pupils talk bullshit.
You shouldn’t listen to their crap, said Isak. Critiques are the Devil’s own invention.
You think so? said Ana, putting Isak in check. Isn’t it kind of healthy to reflect on why you’re doing what you’re doing?
Isak shook his head, and with a flick of his hand he knocked Ana’s queen off the board.
Hey, stop it, said Ana, but Isak hit a pawn, then slapped a knight so hard it leaped onto the floor.
What the hell are you doing? said Ana.
No, fuck my intentions, he said. It’s not the thought that counts. You see?
For a moment she looked at him, confused. Then he laughed.
Yeah Ana, you get it. Come on, let’s go.
So they trudged into his workshop and ate Elvis sandwiches, and the week after that they met several times to play chess. Say what you like about Isak, but you never got bored in his company. She taught him the Spanish Opening, and he taught her about block time, which neither went nor passed, and about photons, which had no rest mass and predated even the Big Bang. Whole nights they’d sit like that, mentally heavy petting, and then one day, when Ana dropped by the workshop, she found Isak lounging on the sofa in his dad’s old rabbit fur, strumming a guitar. When he caught sight of Ana, he sat up with a jerk.
Keep your jacket on, he said, pointing at her. Now we’re going to show them what I’ve got.
As they headed into town, Isak explained that he was sick of all that concrete sculpture bullshit. He was going to play guitar. She would see, he was the best in all of Vestlandet.
We’ll be like Sonny and Cher, he said excitedly. Ike and Tina?
Ana laughed. Like John and Yoko?
No, not them, he said immediately. For God’s sake, anyone but them.
And then they reached the main square, and Isak launched into Wonderwall, which must have been the only song he knew, because he bawled Wonderwall all day long, while Ana ran around with a hat and took donations, and afterward they went to a burger bar, and Isak put the hat on the counter and bought all the burgers that were ready.
Three days later, Ana invited herself to lunch on Isak’s boat. It was moored at the quay in Sjøflyhavnen, and although she couldn’t see him anywhere she recognized the name on the boat and climbed aboard. Below deck it reeked like an after-hours bar, and Isak was sitting on a plank bed, drawing on a cigarette. Ana crabwalked over to him and waved the smoke away.
What are you doing? she said. I thought you didn’t smoke.
What are you talking about? he said, gazing at her in surprise. I’ve always smoked.
He gave Ana a shove, so Ana shoved him back, and they kept shoving each other until they lay naked and moaning on the plank bed, and this time Ana remembered every single touch, and many hours later, as she walked wearily back to the dorm, she didn’t feel a single spot of shame. On the contrary. She stopped at the harbor and watched the birds flirting in the air and a gull dragging a pizza box along the pier, and she thought about the time her dad had rescued a pigeon from a paper bag, and for a moment it felt true: Maybe Isak and the block-time physicists were right, maybe there was no before or now or after, maybe all times existed side by side, and nothing was ever over; and then the pizza bird jabbered up into the sky with a squawk of victory that made Ana’s body tingle.
The next morning the sun streamed through her window, and a gull sat peeking in from the frame. It had a yellow beak and bright round eyes, and Ana smiled and checked her phone, but Isak hadn’t texted. So she went into the bathroom and got the giggles over Isak, who’d asked her to talk dirty in Romanian and told her that his cock was five point seven inches long, and that he averaged three hundred thrusts before he came. All told she was getting one hundred forty-three feet of cock per fuck, which was disappointing, wouldn’t she say? They hadn’t even screwed the distance from the boat to the ice-cream kiosk.
She didn’t hear from Isak the next day either, and Ana made a deal with herself that she was only allowed to check her phone twice a day. She did as her father had taught her, sublimating until she was blue in the face, burying herself in her work at the art-school reading room. As she walked through Bergen she did like the CIA and blasted Van Halen’s Panama so loudly through the headphones that it was completely impossible to think, and, in the late evening, when she couldn’t repress him any longer, she walk
ed past Isak’s workshop and watched at a distance as he danced around the cement mixer like an alchemist, until the butterflies in her stomach made her sick.
She only spoke to two people about Isak. The first was Claudia, and over a crackly internet connection they discussed Ana’s next move.
Doesn’t matter what you do, laughed Claudia. You’re head over heels.
She told Jorunn too, one evening on the ferry from Askøy. They’d been visiting Jorunn’s family, and Ana hadn’t intended to say anything. They stood on the deck, watching the sunset in a wind so bitingly cold that Ana had to wrap her scarf around her face, and suddenly the words came, like her worries were squeezing them out of her larynx.
Could you date an artist? asked Ana, and added a little anecdote about a mutual friend who’d fallen in love with two painters, two conceptual artists, and one photographer, but who’d been flagrantly dumped by all of them, because that kind of man only loved himself, and had no morals at all.
Lol, said Jorunn. Artist or accountant or baker, makes no difference, as long as he’s got a dick.
But then Jorunn’s smile had gone rigid, and a silence had fallen over her.
But you’ve got to stay away from the weirdos, she said. You don’t want to end up with some fucked-up pedophile.
Ana nodded. But what if you do fall in love with a weirdo?
Jorunn hunched over a cigarette, and when she’d lit it she said: Then I guess there’s not much to be done.
But what would you do?
I don’t know, OD on him maybe? Get so much of his pervy cock I was fed up with it.
Not the best advice that’s ever been given, but Ana couldn’t come up with a better idea. She was too shy to knock on Isak’s door, and she didn’t dare ask him out, so she used an old artists’ trick and texted him, explaining that she was working on a video project and needed his help. For the first couple of hours she didn’t hear from him, but in the evening, when Ana’s phone had phantom-vibrated for the tenth time, he finally texted: Sure and ice cream after? It’s on me
They agreed to meet at Isak’s. Ana had no video project, of course, but she did have a camera, and she set it up on the table in front of him and gave him a piece of paper.
This is in Romanian?
Yes, I’d like you to read it aloud.
She told him the piece explored the experience of living in a foreign language, and Isak nodded, and then he stammered his way through the text: Eu, cel mai frumos băiat de pe pământ te iau să-mi prietenă, iubită, mamă a copiilor mei şi soţie a mea, and so on. It was a marriage vow, and without realizing it, sitting in front of the camera, Isak promised to love and honor her, for better and for worse, in times of good art and times of bad art, to comfort and encourage her, and to take her as a friend and lover and the mother of his children, from this day forward to be her fiancé.
Was that good enough? he asked, glancing up.
Ana nodded, barely able to speak. She was fighting the lump in her throat, the light that fell askew through the dirty panes, and Isak, who looked exactly like Peter Pan. She spent that night on Isak’s boat, and the next in his apartment. She dropped by Sjøflyhavnen with tea and stopped bothering to study, living off Maria cookies and spring water and semen, and lost so much weight she had to punch a new hole in her belt. She bought a toothbrush, and moved so much of her clothing to his apartment that by early April she’d de facto moved in. Together they visited his grandma in Sandnes, went to services at St. Mary’s Church, and when the college organized a study trip to Galicia, Isak bought a ticket and went with them.
Are you sure you want to come? said Ana. You don’t have to.
Of course I do, said Isak. I’ve got to look after my little girl.
I’ll never forget it, said Ana to her video diary, the day before they set off: my little girl. And the look in Isak’s eyes. The look of a person in love.
The art school had an exchange agreement with the Facultade de Bellas Artes in Pontevedra, and Ana’d never been to Spain before. She’d been looking forward to it for weeks. She’d had enough of Norway’s cold and wind and darkness, of winter gnawing at her bones, but when the plane broke through the clouds, the rain was still beating heavily against the wings.
It’s probably just a shower, said Isak.
But it wasn’t. The rain fell at evening and at night, it fell against the windowpanes in the hotel’s breakfast room, and Isak wouldn’t put up with it. He wouldn’t sit in the hotel and rot, he said, they were only in Galicia once. Then he disappeared into the town. That day Ana was on an excursion with the art-school group, and when she got back she found Isak under a sunshade with a beer.
What’s up, baby, he said, swinging a car key around his finger. Where do you want to cruise?
He’d rented a little convertible, and for three days they traced dying villages and deserted resorts, brownfields of a forgotten landscape. Ana had been so high on love for the last two months that she’d fallen drastically behind on her work, and now the semester was nearly over, and they were ransacking Galicia like two vandals, sifting for a story they could use to brew art. They found old farmsteads and a tumbledown industrial estate, drove up hill and down dale—but did Ana make a single video recording? She sensed the highways stretching deep into the continent, the quiver of the mossy forest roads, and she leaned her head against the car seat and took Isak’s hand, staring at the hamlets and the Galician rain that seethed in front of her, impossible to capture with her camera. What was she doing with art, anyway? She had her eyes and her ears and her mouth, she had herself and Isak, and the entirety of Europe open before them, a Europe of cities to discover and places to drive, and afternoons so long and soft they seemed to liquefy.
On their fourth day in Galicia, the rain finally stopped. The sun parted the clouds, and the last puddle had scarcely evaporated before the air was full of insects and the towns swelled with girls’ bared legs. Isak immediately made a beeline for a nature reserve. He wanted to catch butterflies; he’d bought a net and everything. He wanted to catch the spring, he said, and Ana just wanted to come along. From the parking lot they ran down the mountainside, the day clear and the valley green in front of them, and Ana said: Look, you can see all the way to Portugal! Isak caught a yellow butterfly and one with dots, and before they let them go they whispered messages for the butterflies to carry up to God. Ana sent a greeting to her father and Isak asked for world peace, or maybe some chips, and when they reached an overhanging rock, he flung the net down. He pulled off Ana’s dress, she dealt with her underwear, and they stood naked, holding each other, pointing down at the river that snaked through the valley. He traced her beauty spots with his finger, and Ana gulped the air. Oh, it was like getting over a bad cold: To think there were so many scents, such radiant warmth on her skin; and then he thrust into her, and she collapsed onto all fours.
Later, as they sat in the car, she said: Isak. I think that was the happiest hour of my life.
He turned his head. What did you say?
On the mountain. The last hour, I think it was the loveliest of my life.
He reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze, looking into her eyes until he had to glance back at the road.
What do you reckon? he said. Want to get it back?
Get it back? said Ana, and at that moment he pulled over and spun the wheel around. What are you doing, she said with a laugh, and Isak smiled and put his foot down, taking the next exit and speeding down toward the river.
Come on, he said, when they’d parked at the side of the road. Kicking the door open, he tumbled out of the car. Come on, Ana, it’s this way. He grabbed her hand and pulled her over to the bridge, the river to Portugal. Come on, get a move on, he laughed, leaping onto the pedestrian crossing. The metal rumbled as they ran, the water gleaming beneath them through the mesh, and Isak drummed his fingers against the latticework.
This is a magical bridge, he shouted breathlessly. Can you feel it? We’re traveling through time.
And Ana gasped for air; yes, she could feel it. The vibrations of the bridge, thrumming all down her fingers and arms and everywhere else, into the roots of her hair, and the river streaming beneath them, as it had done for thousands of years and would do long after all borders and time zones had been forgotten. When they reached the disused custom house on the other side of the bridge, Isak put his arm around her and pointed at the clock: one hour earlier than five minutes before.
That afternoon they walked up the slope to Valenças, bought T-shirts with the Portuguese flag and messed around on the city’s useless fort, which had been conquered first by the barbarians and later by the Arabs, then by armies from León and Asturias and Napoleon’s troops—oh yes, the French, even them. It was a sad, pathetic fort, and Isak laughed at it so long he got a stomach cramp, and as they walked back across the bridge to Spain, Ana stopped and looked at the river, which ran lazy and golden beneath them.
Isak, she said. Did you know I’ve time-traveled before?
She’d promised her mother never to tell about the gap in her life, but she was standing on a bridge that was a time warp where everything shone, and before she knew it, the words were bubbling over, and she was telling him about a fall day in Morocco, when her father had set his watch and her mother had run for the phone, and the water had gushed into the bathtub. Isak listened and nodded. For the first time, the story slithered outside the Ivan family. As the gnats came forth in the dusk, Ana whispered about the silence between her parents, about her father’s suicide, about her dead sister, who in a sense was she herself, and as the last light faded from the bridge Isak dried her eyes and didn’t understand what was happening or what it would lead to, or how the story was already sidling through the cracks in his mind.
Five weeks after the Portugal trip, Ana was on a plane to Bucharest. She was going home for the summer; it had been a strange time. Isak had worked constantly on an exhibition in Stavanger, and he’d been staying at his grandmother’s farm outside Sandnes in order to be closer to the museum. Ana had been busy too. Her semester project was due in late June, and she was doing a whole series of Norwegians reading promises in Romanian.
The Invention of Ana Page 22
