Love

by Hanne Ørstavik

  “Hi,” he says softly, then bends down to pick up the cash box before they walk on.

  Vibeke looks up at the stars.

  The trailers are bigger than they look from a distance. In front of each door is a pair of steps or a stool. The snow has already been trampled down to a path, as if the fair had been here for some time. Most of the trailers have got aerials on them, one’s got a big satellite dish and the TV on inside. She sees its blue flicker behind the thin curtain, the shadow of a man as he gets to his feet.

  He holds the door open for her. She steps up onto the little stool, gripping the door frame with one hand. Inside, she sits down on a folding chair and starts to undo her boots. She looks up at him. He pulls off his overalls while reading something on a little poster. The warmth inside the trailer makes her realize how cold she is, her thighs, calves and throat are freezing.

  She follows him inside, sitting down where he indicates. They’re in the living area, there’s a grey table and an angled sofa in flecked green. Above the sofa there are windows on all three sides. The curtains are drawn. A kind of jungle pattern with splashy parrots.

  “What a lot of room in here,” says Vibeke. “It’s like a little house. I can’t remember the last time I was inside a trailer. You don’t need much more than this. It’s minimalistic and functional at the same time.”

  She looks up at the ceiling above the table. There’s a poster stuck to it with tape, a blue-green sky with the orange circle of a sun in the middle.

  He peers into a cupboard in the kitchen area, searching for something, the light striking his face from below, throwing his eyes into shadow.

  “These open kitchens really are super. You can be doing the cooking and still be part of the conversation,” she says.

  “Looks like instant’s all we’ve got,” he says, filling the kettle with water.

  She says instant will do fine. A few simple touches would work wonders here, she thinks to herself. All it needs is for someone to sew some cushion covers in matching colors, pull down those hideous curtains and put some new ones up that aren’t as fussy, plainer ones to let in the light. And of course get rid of that awful poster on the ceiling.

  There are some books on one of the shelves above the windows. She tilts her head to read the titles. Fiction by writers she’s never heard of. Men.

  She looks at him. All of a sudden his features seem to emerge and become clearer to her. His face expresses reflection, she thinks to herself. There’s a classic quality about him. He triggers pleasant images in her mind: the two of them together on an endless beach, it’s winter and they’re the only people there; she runs along the shore and he gazes at her, seeing everything she contains, intelligent and warm.

  He plugs the kettle into the socket above the counter and switches it on, opens a cupboard and takes out two mugs that chink as he puts them down.

  She thinks how handsome he is.

  JON DREAMS HE’S WALKING home with Vibeke. They turn into the big yard at the back of the building they lived in before. It’s been snowing, the white of the ground is bright against the darkness of the yard. They go toward the far entrance. Vibeke goes first, her movements are normal, it’s as if she can’t hear that everything around them is so still. Inside the entrance the mailboxes have been vandalized, the lids hang from their hinges. It seems like the whole building has fallen into disrepair, no one lives there anymore and there’s no more mail to deliver. Vibeke opens their own mail box as if she hasn’t noticed. The entire row of mail boxes almost comes away from the wall with a scraping sound. Everything goes so slowly. He hears footsteps on the stairs. He was sure the building was empty, but now someone’s there. They stand still and wait. It’s the downstairs neighbor, he says the soldiers are on their floor now, in the flat across the landing from theirs. He whispers the words and creeps back upstairs again. They follow him without speaking, climbing the staircase as though nothing was wrong, perhaps more quietly than usual, though not silently by any means. The door of their flat is open. They go inside. The place is dark. A uniformed man sits eating in the kitchen. The man is his father. Light shines down on him from a bulb above the table. All the neighbors are gathered around, standing or seated. The man munches the fat cheese, the slices of ham. The butter. The white bread. He cuts thick wedges from the cheese. It’s all the food they’ve got. They’ve been saving it, eating only sparingly. He piles layers of ham on top of his cheese. They watch him as he eats. They watch in silence. He eats and eats, and as he chews the food he tells sad stories about his life that make him cry.

  Jon stirs, his mouth is dry. The light is on and he sits up. The girl is asleep on the other bed. She must have dropped off too. He tiptoes over and stands there looking at her. She’s pulled the cover up, her right hand still clutching it under her chin. He touches her hand. Her skin feels soft and warm. Her hair is almost as fair as his, curled by the perspiration on her brow. There’s a ticking noise and he glances around. It’s the tape recorder, it’s still on play after the tape has run out. His finger presses stop. The walls of the room are painted pale orange. A poster hangs above her bed, tall, leafy trees with a path leading among them, winding away into the forest. At the head of the bed hangs a small cross, next to the curtain some jewellery on a nail; he sees a little heart of grey stone on a chain. Someone has stuck stickers on the bed frame. On the floor between the two beds are some comics. He bends down and looks at the covers, there are some he hasn’t read. He sits down on the floor and starts reading while he waits for her to wake up.

  Vibeke curls her hands around her mug as if to keep them warm, but there’s nothing in it yet. The man from the fair is in the shower. She doesn’t know his name. I must remember to ask, she tells herself. She thinks he might be a foreigner, there’s something different about him. The nose, she thinks. Maybe he’s Jewish. But he doesn’t have an accent.

  The kettle switches itself off and she gets up to put the coffee in the mugs. There are some teaspoons in a jar on the counter, she uses one to measure the amount. The cold spoon in her hand makes her think how tidy the trailer is, too tidy almost, and clean. There’s a photo stuck to the cupboard over the counter with a drawing pin. It shows some people posing together in a huddle by a table set for dinner. They’ve all got moustaches, drawn in with what looks like charcoal.

  “My family,” he says behind her.

  He’s pulled the curtain at the rear of the trailer slightly to one side and stands towelling his hair.

  “Christmas dinner last year. My sister always takes some pictures with the self-timer and sends us all copies. Says it makes her feel like we’re a family.”

  Vibeke sees him now, to the left at the back, next to an elderly man with a beard. His hair is shorter in the photo, he looks younger. She wonders how his sister can send him letters when he’s always on the move with the fair. Most likely they’ve got an itinerary so people know where they’re going and when. But if they do well in one place maybe they stay longer, in which case there’d be a knock-on effect and the itinerary would go to pot.

  “I made it a bit strong,” she says, and sits down again.

  “That’s all right,” he says, looking at her as he combs his damp hair back.

  He sits down on the sofa on the opposite side of the table and bends over his coffee, almost dipping his nose in it. Mm. Then he leans back against the cushions, studying her and smiling, as if this is all he’s been waiting for. It feels nice, she thinks to herself, being together like this. She feels an intuitive sense of knowing him. The person he is. The things he needs. The direction he’s going in life.

  “It must be such a freedom, traveling from place to place, meeting new people. Nothing to cart around apart from what can go in a trailer,” she says.

  “Well, it’s not all roses.”

  His voice is warm. She feels his eyes upon her again, it’s like his gaze is so powerful it lifts her off the ground and keeps her floating in the air.

  “Roses aren’t as
harmless as you might think.”

  She almost whispers.

  He smiles again. He’s a man for me, she thinks. Her body senses it to be true, the insight is physical. The body can be trusted.

  She feels a draft from the window behind her. The air in the trailer is muggy after his shower, the windows are probably all steamed up behind the curtains. The cold air nips at her upper back and neck. She lifts her shoulders to her ears and folds her arms around her chest. Her lips shudder. Brrr. He says he’s got a sweater somewhere. He’s responsive to signals, she thinks to herself and laughs. He leans forward and rummages in the storage under the sofa.

  “This cold spell’s been going on for ages,” she says. She wishes she could think of something to say that would bring them closer, open things up a bit more. He pulls a woolly blanket out.

  “Here,” he says, rising to his feet and handing it to her across the table.

  Stooping under the low ceiling, he knocks his mug over in the process. He swears, spitting the words harshly as the coffee runs over the edge of the table onto the floor. She can see the dampness of his brow at the hairline.

  Jon puts the last of the comics down and gets to his feet. He needs the toilet. He looks at her again. She’s still asleep. He can see the whites of her eyes. She must be waking up, he thinks. He stands quietly and waits for a moment, but she doesn’t stir. He thinks maybe her eyes are always like that when she’s asleep, with the whites showing. He feels an urge to wake her up so he can tell her. Then abruptly she opens her eyes wide and looks at him.

  “I need the toilet,” he says.

  She closes her eyes again. Jon can tell she’s gone back to sleep. He wonders if she was asleep when she looked at him too.

  The woolly blanket helps. Vibeke watches his strong, slender hands as they snatch wads of paper towel from the roll and lay them out on the table and floor. The coffee seeps through and turns the paper brown.

  The bedroom door creaks as he opens it. He can’t hear any other sounds in the house. The landing is dark. He thinks the people he heard before must have switched the lights off and gone out. Or maybe they’ve gone to bed. Vibeke must be wondering where he is. He can see some carrier bags and a heap of clothes by the railing at the top of the stairs. He pulls his waterpistol from his back pocket and holds it at the ready in his right hand. He listens, crouching forward before edging toward where he thinks the toilet must be. Cautiously he opens the door, only to find it’s another bedroom. This one has two beds in it as well, one by each wall, a rag mat in the middle under the window. One of the beds is still made. A little lamp shines above the other one. It looks like someone’s just been lying in it, the sheets are messed up, and on the floor next to it, in the light of the lamp, is a book with its pages open.

  He closes the door. At this very moment in time, someone, somewhere, is being tortured. Maybe there’s a torture room in this house. Maybe someone’s a prisoner here and it’s his job to find them and get them out. He doesn’t know where to begin. He opens another door that looks like a cupboard, only with a proper handle to turn. He finds the switch inside the door and turns the light on. There, under the sloping wall, is a toilet with a wooden seat.

  He draws rings in the bowl with his pee. It smells different here than at home. He watches the water as it flushes away, thinking suddenly of the light of summer, the way he can lie in his bed and look out the window, the sky completely white, feeling himself dissolve.

  “We’re moving on tomorrow,” he says, stirring coffee granules into another mug of hot water. Vibeke asks where they’re going. He says they’re off west first, south after that.

  “It’s too cold here,” he says with a smile.

  Vibeke nods.

  “You get used to it,” she says.

  He asks what she does.

  “Arts and culture officer in the local authority,” she says. “I’ve only just started. The people are nice and there are some very exciting challenges in an out-of-the-way area like this. Identity and community are important concepts to theme if we’re to counter the drift toward the urban areas, and culture’s a very appropriate instrument in that respect.”

  He looks at her as he listens, smiling when she’s finished. She feels like touching the stubble of his beard with the tips of her fingers, smoothing her hands over his face the way she does with the covers of her books.

  “Apart from that I like reading, that’s my way of traveling,” she says. “I was actually going to the library tonight, only it was closed.”

  She falls silent for a moment.

  “So I came here instead.”

  He gazes into the curtain next to her. She feels like they share something now. It feels like pushing a boat from the shore, the moment the boat comes free of the sand and floats, floats on the water.

  THE PHONE RINGS SOMEWHERE in the house. It keeps on ringing, no one answers. Jon follows the sound, down the stairs to the ground floor. Light seeps into the hall through the glass door leading out to the entrance porch. By the wall is a bucket of water, next to it a cloth wrung dry. He locates the phone, it’s on a set of drawers underneath a mirror. He lifts the receiver while looking in the mirror and says hello. One side of his face is in the light from the entrance porch. At first he hears a low hum of voices, as if from some very big room, like the departure hall of a small airport, he thinks to himself. Then a man starts talking. He says they’re doing a survey. He asks what brand of soap the household has used most often during the last month and rattles off a list of names. Jon says he doesn’t know, he doesn’t live there. The man asks if he can speak to someone who does. Jon says there’s no one in. The man says goodbye and hangs up, Jon hears the dial tone, a faint hum, as if the man had called from some faraway place.

  “Who was it?”

  The girl is standing on the stair. The phone must have woken her up. He sees her in the mirror, her face looks puffy.

  “Why did you say there was no one in?”

  “I thought you were asleep,” he says.

  He puts the receiver down.

  “You could have woken me up.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Why didn’t you then?”

  “I don’t know.” He tries to remember what thoughts passed through his mind when he heard it ring. “It was only a survey, someone wanting to know about soap,” he says.

  He looks at her in the mirror. She doesn’t say anything, her eyes are fixed on the phone. He feels himself blinking again. He tries to stop. Her hair hangs down over her shoulders, it looks almost luminous in the dim light, and her red sweater looks black.

  He thinks she looks older now than in the bedroom. She could be fifteen or seventeen.

  When she speaks again it feels like they’ve been standing there for a long time in silence. She asks him if he wants some cocoa.

  He follows her into the kitchen. She turns the light on at the switch above the counter. It flickers before going on. Jon leans against a cupboard while she gets the milk and sugar and the cocoa out. He thinks about the train set. Maybe he’ll get it tomorrow. Next year you can make a list and wish for something big, because this year it’s going to be things you need. But soft packages are nice too, though, aren’t they? Vibeke says she likes to keep a promise. The train set is at the top of his list. Vibeke’s bound to have seen the list he left on his desk.

  He thinks about the train and the model landscape in the shop window in the town, the lights that change from green to red and back again, the little figures on the platform. He remembers a boy in a blue padded coat outside a shop.

  She uses a metal whisk in the saucepan. They don’t speak, all they do is stand next to each other, watching the whisk as it smoothes the dark brown paste at the bottom. She adds the milk and they watch again as it heats up.

  She puts the saucepan on the table and ladels cocoa into the cups. They sit across from each other, slurping with chocolate moustaches.

  “Where did you live before?”

&nbs
p; “Farther south. We had to move.”

  “Did you go to a big school there?”

  “Yes,” says Jon.

  She asks how you make friends in a big school. He thinks about it.

  “I’m not sure,” he says after a while. “It just happens, that’s all. In class, or in something after school. I was in a role-playing club, but they only played historical games with Vikings and stuff. I’m more into science fiction.”

  “Are your parents divorced?”

  “Yes. My mom had to get away,” says Jon. “She was too young to be tied down. I was still little, so it’s normal for me.”

  “I’ve seen you on the school bus,” says the girl.

  Jon tries to work out if he’s seen her too. He can’t remember her face, but he remembers someone giggling near the back one day. He turned around and saw two girls, one with fair hair, the other darker. He wonders if the fair-haired one might have been her.

  “What class are you in?” he asks.

  “Four,” says the girl. “It’s boring.”

  She starts telling him about the classes and what teachers they have and how dull she finds it all. He looks out at the snow-covered road and the house diagonally opposite. It’s dark in all the windows. Jon thinks it must be night now. He sees some headlights approach, and a glimpse of the vehicle as it drives past and away, a van with black paintwork. Jon wonders what would happen if it stopped outside the window. He imagines it’s got flames painted along the sides so that when it goes fast it looks like the front wheels are on fire and the flames are trailing behind. He’s seen a Matchbox car just like it. He pictures a thin man dressed in black getting out of the driver’s seat, uncorking a bottle and knocking back a swig while staring straight into the kitchen where Jon’s sitting with his cocoa.

  She switches the TV on. The first music video shows things from a distance at first, in fine colors, then the camera zooms in so you can see what everything looks like close up. A fruit bowl, for instance, with some sliced melons in it; what looked like seeds from a distance are actually wriggling, white maggots.