Love

by Hanne Ørstavik

  They walk toward the driveway of the house. When he turns around, the other girl is already some way down the road. He can see she’s not skating, she lifts her feet as if she had shoes on.

  HE HAS TO WAIT in the vestibule while she asks if it’s okay to bring someone home. There’s a puddle of melted snow on the green flooring from the boots dumped at each side. Just like at ours, he thinks to himself. Normally he brushes the snow from his boots on the step, but it doesn’t matter how hard he tries there’s always some left to make a puddle. The walls of the vestibule are grey. The door leading in to the hall is frosted glass with brown-painted woodwork. He hears voices, a rush of water in the pipes, then someone turns the tap off and it stops. Jon recognizes a smell but can’t remember what it is. He hears someone coming again. Through the glass he sees the blurred outline of the girl, her red sweater, a hand reaching out toward the door handle in front of him.

  The house smells of firewood burning in a wood burner. A dry smell. They go up the stairs. There are some doors leading off the landing. She opens one, switches the big light on and lets him go in first. It looks like she shares with someone else, there are two beds. The window is straight in front, facing the forest to the rear of the house. He goes up to it. A pair of patterned curtains hang down at each side. He looks out. He sees how the light from the windows of the house extends toward the trees. He thinks the dark tree trunks in the white snow are like lines of charcoal on a piece of paper. The further away they are, the closer together they seem. Eventually they recede into black. She asks why he keeps doing that with his eyes all the time. Jon says he doesn’t know. He turns toward her, he says he tries not to, but he can’t help it. The girl blinks a few times. It’s tiring, she says. I don’t think about it, says Jon. My aunt’s got a glass eye, says the girl. She kept looking through keyholes when she was little, only one day my dad was on the other side, he stuck a screwdriver through the hole to stop her spying. Feel like a game of Othello? Before he can say anything she gets the box out from under one of the beds. They sit on the floor with the board and all the black and white counters in the middle.

  The program’s finished now, the credits are rolling. Vibeke sits up, she’ll have to get a move on if she wants to take some books out before they close. The brown eyes. She sees them everywhere, whenever she blinks, like the little stars you see after looking at a bright light. She wonders what it must be like to live with an engineer. What are they interested in? She goes into the bedroom and puts some clothes on, sporty and casual, nothing that might look calculated. In case she bumps into him at the library, stranger things have happened, there aren’t many places to go here. She wonders what section he’d be browsing. Science. Crime and thrillers. Travel. Biographies. Perhaps even poetry. She blow-dries her hair in the bathroom, bending forward, proceeding from the roots to the ends. When she’s done she tosses her head back and looks in the mirror. Success or fail? Not bad at all. She smiles at herself and rummages through her cosmetics. Powder, would he go for powder, she wonders, and dashes around the house, picking up the books to take back and dropping them in a bag.

  She goes out into the vestibule, buttons her coat and studies herself in the mirror, pops her head back into the hall and calls out to Jon. She looks at her reflection again. She decided on hardly any make-up at all. He’s not answering. She calls again and glances at the time, less than half an hour before they close. He’s started going to bed on his own now, she’s not even allowed to come in and say goodnight. She thinks of his eyelashes, almost white. She moves her head from side to side, checking her hair in the mirror, the way it falls so softly about her face, her scalp still warm from the time it took to dry it. She snatches the keys from the little table, picks up the bag with the books in it and smiles at herself in the mirror again before opening the front door and stepping out.

  THE CARS ARE PARKED up in rows outside the community center. Some people are sitting inside them because of the cold, rolling down the window to chat with someone they know in the car next to them, engines idling. Vibeke pays no attention. She slams her door shut and checks the handle to make sure it’s locked. The funfair, she thinks to herself. That’s what they’re here for, there’s hardly ever a soul in the library. People should make use of it more often. It’s such a pleasant place to come, with potted plants and nice posters on the walls. She goes toward the entrance, the library’s in the community center basement. Someone whistles but she doesn’t turn to look.

  It looks dark behind the glass doors. There’s a sheet of paper with the opening hours on it stuck to the other side of the glass. Vibeke realizes she’s mistaken. Late opening is Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays they close at three. I forget this place is so small, she says to herself. She drops the books through the return slot. It almost hurts to let go, the way they splay out in a heap on the floor. It’s like leaving some people of whom she’s grown fond.

  She leans back against the wall and lights a cigarette, not knowing quite what to do now, having had a bath and everything. Her eyes follow a car as it skittles away, snow kicking up from its wheels. She looks across at the festoon of colored lights at the entrance to the fair. They shine so brightly against the darkness of the sky, as if to tell everyone how irresistible they are. Our day’s Carnival, Vibeke thinks to herself. Maybe I should go in and have a look. Maybe there’s someone who can tell fortunes.

  “It’s my birthday tomorrow,” says Jon.

  “Let me guess, you’ll be eighteen,” the girl says with a laugh.

  Jon has the upper hand, his black counters are all over the board. The girl has given up and isn’t taking it seriously anymore.

  Vibeke goes in through the fairground entrance. A reveller bumps into her, braying something unintelligible and carrying on oblivious. She stops and looks around. The fair’s set out in a kind of horseshoe, tombolas and amusements around the edge, rides in the middle. The spaceship ride she read about rumbles along with half-empty cars, a young girl squeals and the music pounds, driven by the same generator that powers the rides.

  The tombolas are small trailers with open hatches along the side. At one stands a woman with long, white hair reaching down to her waist. Vibeke thinks it must be a wig. She’s holding a yellow plastic tub full of tickets. Her hands are covered by long, white gloves edged with imitation fur, her cape is white too, and on her feet she wears tall, white boots. The woman looks straight at her as she walks past. Then new customers make her busy. Her make-up’s overdone, Vibeke thinks to herself, she ought to make more of an effort.

  The girl rummages in a carrier bag hanging behind the door. She takes out a cassette and goes over to the tape recorder on the window sill.

  “This is really good. I like to listen to this when I’m relaxing.”

  She turns the flat tape recorder on its side so the sound can come out into the room, puts the cassette in and switches it on. He sits down on one of the beds. She sits on the other and looks at him, then lies down on top of the cover with her face turned toward him. He can tell from her eyes that she’s listening to the music. They look at each other. He feels it in his tummy, the train as it comes hurtling. He’s standing in the middle of the track and it’s coming straight at him, it’s going to run him down, the engine’s as big as a five-storey house. But instead it whisks him up and takes him with it. Now he’s crouched in a cradle at the front of the train, carried along, gently and unperilously, the wind in his eyes, but that doesn’t matter, because behind him is the train, and it feels like snuggling up to a warm, living creature.

  The music sounds Indian, or Chinese, he’s not sure. He leans back against the wall and closes his eyes. He’s driving a train in China, the track runs along the top of the Great Wall, up and down it goes, and up and down again, with a view of white-painted mountainsides and a winding river far away in the distance. He opens his eyes again and feels how tired he is.

  She seems to be asleep. He thinks she looks like someone from Asia. It’s to do with h
er eyes, the taut skin around her lips, the way her mouth seems to merge into her face. Or maybe it’s her face that merges, he thinks to himself, seeping toward her mouth, vanishing into the slit between her narrow lips.

  Vibeke goes over to a cabinet where you put a coin in to steer a kind of arm that shoves prizes down into a hatch. There are various prizes you can win, like colored fountain pens with a little flashlight at the end of the cap, imitations of old-fashioned lipstick cases to put refills in, with fake gold and a little mirror on the side, a variety of wristwatches, some see-through plastic boxes containing silk scarfs and ties. The prizes are all laid out on a bed of bright yellow cellophane. Little lights built into the top of the cabinet shine down on the cellophane from different angles, making it twinkle and shimmer. Besides the cellophane there are marbles of many different colors. From a distance the marbles make the cabinet look like it’s full of diamonds, Vibeke thinks, and smiles at the thought. She puts a coin in and tries to steer the arm toward a lipstick case. The prize is just about to tip over the edge into the chute, but then the arm goes up again. Five marbles fall into the hatch instead. She puts them in her pocket.

  Jon thinks of birthdays he’s seen on TV. The family wakes the birthday boy or the birthday girl up in the morning, they come into the room with a cake with candles on it and their arms laden with packages. The parents kiss each other. But that’s in America. You hardly ever see what’s in the packages. He thinks of the train set he’s seen in the shop, its smart red and grey, the engine with its detachable snow plow at the front. The best carriages have actual doors so you can put passengers in. Jon’s the conductor, he wears a uniform and sells his tickets cheerfully to everyone. Then he’s the engine driver, driving the train through tunnels in the fells, across tawny plateaus, through narrow green valleys with thin, glittering streams. Vibeke stands waiting at one of the stations. He stops to let her on. He blows his whistle so everyone can hear. She sits at the front with him in the driver’s cab, she smokes and looks out at the light and the landscape. Jon speaks into the microphone and orders some tea.

  “I like your hair.”

  She looks up and sees a man in dark-blue overalls. He works at the fair, she’s seen quite a few like him in the same thick workwear. He asks if she’d like a smoke. His hair is a shock of thick, blond curls, his face a bright smile. Vibeke thinks he looks nice. A simple type, more than likely, but why not? She smiles back and says yes, she would. He leans against the cabinet and offers her the packet with a long, slender hand. It’s a full packet. Maybe he doesn’t actually smoke, she thinks to herself. She pulls out a cigarette. He takes one too and puts it between his lips. He puts the packet in the left-hand breast pocket of his overalls before patting for a lighter. He finds one in a back pocket and lifts his hand to give her a light. She looks at his nails, cut to the quick. His eyes latch on to the stud in her nose, she tries to work out what he thinks of it. He smiles again, his eyes are big and sad and happy all at the same time.

  “Did you win anything?” he asks as he lights up.

  Vibeke shows him the marbles. They lie in a cluster in her palm. At the center of each is a kind of colored propeller, encased in gleaming glass.

  “I remember losing my best marble,” he says. “I dropped it under a grate outside the main door at school. In the second year, I think it was. I could stand there and look at it every breaktime, but the grate was too heavy to lift and I was too shy to ask the caretaker. I thought it was the end of the world.”

  She studies him as he looks out over the fairground. A cheer goes up at the shooting gallery, a group of young men dressed up in Superman outfits throw their arms around each other and slap each other’s backs like they were celebrating a goal. Vibeke thinks it must be a stag party. They both smile.

  “It’s cold standing here,” he says, taking a drag.

  “Yes,” she says. “It is.”

  She wants to say more, but she doesn’t know what. Not that she thinks they have anything much to talk about, she just feels a bit sorry for him, that’s all. This is his life, traveling around with a funfair. She puts the marbles back in her pocket, circulating them between her fingers, and stamps her feet a couple of times to keep warm. The man takes a final drag of his cigarette then drops the end at his feet, mashing it into the snow under the sole of his boot.

  “Got to get back to work,” he says with a nod toward the spaceship ride.

  “You staying around for a bit?” He looks at her with his head tilted slightly to the side, a look of sincerity in his eyes. He smiles again, and she answers: “Maybe.”

  She watches him as he goes back to the small wooden shed where the controls are housed. A queue has formed, a pair of teenage girls keep shoving each other in and out of the line. He goes in by a door around the back, she can just make him out inside, he has to bend down to take the money through the low, glass-fronted hatch. When there’s no more queue, before he starts the ride, he leans forward and looks out at her. He waves and makes a face. Monkey in a cage. She can see him laughing.

  She realizes there’s no ferris wheel and supposes the fair to be too small for one. Maybe this is a winter version and they’ve got more in the summer. In the middle is a merry-go-round with colorful motorbikes and sports cars. Some smaller children have been on a few times, but apart from them its customers are few and far between. It goes too slow, Vibeke imagines. She looks down at her feet. Her boots are quite new. She feels her nylons under her trousers, they pinch her thighs in the cold.

  THE CUDDLY TOYS SIT crammed together on shelves all the way up to the roof of the tombola stall. At the top are some giant teddies, pink, green, and grey. The wall behind is covered with what looks like silver foil. The woman dressed in white stands on a little platform that runs along the front of the stall, surveying the fairground. After a moment she comes over in Vibeke’s direction, descending from the platform by a pair of steps. Vibeke wonders whether to walk away, but the woman’s already holding her yellow tub out toward her.

  She stops right in front of her with only the tub between them. Vibeke sees her face is powdered white, her lips too. She picks a ticket and pays the woman what she says they cost. Each ticket comprises three little windows. The sign outside the stall tells her each window hides the face of a playing card. To win you’ve got to get three the same, but there are prizes for other combinations too. She takes off her right glove and opens the windows with the nail of her thumb. The nail is a deep, glossy red; she’d quite forgotten. She can see she hasn’t won anything and tosses the ticket into a cardboard box at the side of the trailer. Between the stalls she can see some other trailers parked around the back. That must be where the workers live, she thinks. What a sad life it must be. Beyond, the distant lights of a car heading south along the highway illuminate the sky above the trees. Her eyes follow their path.

  “Hi there,” a low voice says behind her.

  Vibeke swivels around. It’s the woman in the white wig again. She holds out her tub and gives it a little shake. Vibeke buys another ticket.

  THERE AREN’T AS MANY people on the fairground now. Some have gone into a five-sided, red-and-white striped tent where it says they’ve got heaters inside. Apparently there’s a sideshow of some kind about to start. Vibeke takes off her glove and massages her lips with her right hand. Music was coming from the big loudspeakers on the trailer roofs, but now it’s stopped. She’s not sure how long it’s been quiet. A few minutes, perhaps. She tries to think back. Or maybe just a few seconds, the pause between two songs. She hears the sqeaky crunch of her footsteps in the snow. The music starts again. The different loudspeakers don’t seem to be entirely in synch. Maybe it’s just the tape that’s a bit worn, she thinks. She stamps her feet in time to the music and feels like dancing, taps a cigarette from the packet and lights up.

  He emerges from the shed by the spaceship ride. That didn’t take long, she thinks to herself. He’s carrying something under his arm as he comes toward her. He looks small
among the rides.

  Vibeke, she says to herself. Pull yourself together. Not a fairground worker, surely.

  “Having fun?” he says, and stops in front of her before adding: “Well I’m done for the night anyway.” His voice is soft and he looks straight at her as he speaks. It feels as if the moment expands, taking on some newer, deeper dimension than she was prepared for. She looks at his boots in the trampled-down snow, her gaze passing ove his dark-blue overalls, pausing at the yellow ferris-wheel patch at the thigh, continuing upwards to his eyes. His eyes are intense, she thinks to herself. A strong gaze.

  “Up for a coffee?” he asks, and smiles again.

  She realizes how cold she is, her feet especially are freezing. Thoughts pass through her mind like a slideshow. A travelling fairground worker. But it’s only a coffee. She smiles and says yes.

  They pass some pinball machines on a raised platform as they walk toward the trailers on the outskirts of the fair. The trailers are made of a kind of corrugated metal. Aluminium, perhaps. Or steel. She’s not sure, she’s never seen any like them before.

  She can’t hear any traffic from the road. It’s getting late. He walks in front and she notes how straight he holds his back. She likes it, it’s a sign of self-esteem, a man who knows who he is.

  He stops and turns toward her, taking a packet of chewing gum from his right trouser pocket. He asks if she wants some. She shakes her head. He puts the cash box down in the snow while he takes off the wrapper. He glances up at her and smiles before pressing the stick of gum down against his tongue. The gum is brittle and breaks. He laughs, and Vibeke laughs with him. He takes her hand and gives it a squeeze, and his eyes look at hers.