Love

by Hanne Ørstavik

  He swerves through a roundabout and she tips toward him, stopping herself with a hand against his seat, then straightening up.

  CLOSING THE GLOVE COMPARTMENT, he finds a yellow candy in the groove. It must have fallen out of a packet, it has dust stuck to it. He puts it in his mouth and sucks. It tastes of butter. He thinks of a rhyme he learned with corresponding hand movements, drumming different fingers in a certain pattern as fast as you can. It’s best against a hard surface, but he uses his thigh so it doesn’t make too much noise. After a while he tries with both hands at once, only it’s slower that way. He concentrates on speeding it up, then feels something press against his left temple.

  Tom turns the headlights on full. He whistles to himself for a bit, tosses a packet of chewing gum onto the dashboard and asks if she wants some. She shakes her head. They’ve already left the town behind. He tells her about something he and a couple of the guys from the fair did a while back, it was just before closing, some girls were on one of the rides, but instead of stopping it after the usual time they kept it going and wouldn’t let them off. He laughs.

  “What are you playing at?’

  Her voice sounds forceful and commanding, Jon can hardly tell it’s hers. He stops drumming and looks up at her. She’s sitting with her head back the way she was when she was asleep, her eyes are narrow slits looking askance at him. He says it’s just a game he’s practicing. She doesn’t say anything. Jon tells her how hard it is to do with both hands, and demonstrates. When he’s finished he wants to know what she thinks. She stares out at the road in front of them. His eyes follow hers and look out.

  The landscape opens briefly as they approach the steep hill before the long, flat stretch through the forest. Vibeke knows the way now. It feels shorter every time. It’s as if Tom is invigorated by the sight of the seemingly endless ribbon of road; he speeds up. The beam of the headlights is a wide cone of white in the dark, it’s like the road ahead keeps expanding. The Expanding World, that science book on her shelf. She hasn’t read it yet, there’s always a novel that’s more appealing. She must mention it to Tom sometime. When it comes to modern physics she feels completely blank, but it seems very interesting.

  Jon is blinded by the glare of the oncoming vehicle, he glances away, then peers back through screwed-up eyes. He can see it’s got big wheels and is higher up off the road than a normal car. An army vehicle, he thinks to himself. In a few seconds we’ll be caught in its lights and be discovered. He ducks down in his seat and puts his head against his knees. The invaders are here and their spotlights have got deadly lasers in them. She asks what he’s doing. He doesn’t have time to answer. The car flashes past.

  “Did you see that?” says Tom.

  Vibeke asks what he means.

  “That car we just passed.”

  “Yes,” says Vibeke, wondering why he sounds so irritable all of a sudden. “I don’t think it was the police though.”

  “But there was someone in it, didn’t you see?”

  “Maybe they just wanted to be on their own for a bit. Maybe they were listening to some classical music.”

  She looks at him. He stares stiffly out at the road in front. She feels a tenderness for him, he seems so burdened. She wishes he’d let her help.

  Jon hears the vehicle fade into the distance. They sit quite still, as if they’re both listening. The woman with the short hair spits some words out between her lips:

  “The stupid fuck.”

  She lights up a cigarette and takes a series of long, deep pulls. Her movements are calm and measured, but her hands are shaking slightly. The car fills with smoke again.

  Abruptly she turns the ignition, grips the steering wheel with both hands and turns the car around on the road. A wheel spins in the snow before finding purchase.

  Vibeke looks out at the dark forest, the curving road ahead. She tries to think how long it’ll be before they’re back. Tom sings a song with a seemingly endless number of verses. After each chorus he strikes his index finger twice against the steering wheel. She studies his body, his face. There’s a little fleck of dried toothpaste in the corner of his mouth, she hadn’t noticed until now. She tries to think back to when he brushed his teeth, it must have been in the trailer just before they left. She feels tired in a nice sort of way and feels an urge to snuggle up to him, to fall asleep and wake up with someone warm.

  “So, what does the future hold for you?” she asks.

  “If only I knew,” he says.

  “I mean, in most books there’s a chapter two, a continuation of the story that’s started.”

  “I hope so.”

  “What about this story, tonight? How does the next chapter go?”

  Tom sighs. He opens his mouth, then shuts it again. Then he says:

  “You know as well as I do you can’t continue something that never started.”

  A silence ensues. Vibeke wishes she hadn’t asked. She’s been too direct again and he feels pressured, invaded. It annoys her, she’d been doing so well lately recognizing people’s boundaries. Sometimes though you’ve got to take a chance and run the risk.

  “Things can be going on inside you without you even knowing. A chance encounter can set things in motion and you don’t always realize until afterwards that something has happened and you’re changed. You must always be humble and take into account that you perhaps haven’t got the full picture.”

  She sees him clench his teeth. There’s something untamed about him, she thinks to herself. He lacks impulse control. The way he stayed behind to talk to that girl in the bar, even though he knew she was sitting there in the cold waiting for him. Maybe he’s unbalanced. Maybe he’s working on keeping a hold on himself, and the control he thereby achieves is something he needs to cling to. When she thinks of it like that the opposites inside him seem to be reconciled. Mental disorder and intellectual capacity are often closely connected, she thinks of the books in the trailer. Now he’s travelling around with the fair as part of some rehabilitation program. The woman in the white wig was a bit weird too.

  Her eyes follow the marker poles at the side of the road, the even spaces between them forming a rhythm in her mind.

  She feels alone and strong.

  The woman with the short hair tells him to sit up and stop fooling around. Jon looks at her; the way she smokes, hard, snappy drags. She hasn’t asked if he wants one. Maybe she really is a man, Jon thinks to himself, her nose is a bit big. He tries to see if there’s a bulge in her pants. He can’t tell one way or another, her white sweater covers her thighs. He can’t see her titties either, he thinks if she’s got any they must be pretty small. She asks him what he’s staring at. Or rather he asks, Jon thinks to himself. “Nothing,” he replies, and looks down at his hands, his fingers, comparing them to those on the steering wheel. He can hardly recognize them as his own.

  They come out of the bend into the lit-up stretch of road before the turn-off to the village. To the right she can see the lights of the fair, the garlands of light bulbs, red, yellow, green, blue, purple, orange, sagging arcs against the darkness of the sky. Like the bead necklaces she had when she was little. She remembers the marbles all of a sudden and puts a hand in her pocket to feel them. They’re not cold anymore. She takes one out and slips it behind her into the crack of the seat without him noticing; a small part of her will now be with him, even if he doesn’t know. Maybe he’ll find it one day and remember her.

  They pass the council offices. Her own office faces the other side, her window can’t be seen from the road. He slows down and pulls in.

  “Tell me which way and I’ll drop you off.”

  She pauses.

  He revs the engine.

  “Just follow the road,” she says, softly so as not to provoke him. “It’s not far.”

  JON PRETENDS HE’S PRESSED back in his seat by the sheer force of acceleration as the craft thrusts away into space. He looks up at her, the muscles of her jaw tightening and releasing again. He looks bac
k at the road, at the beam of the headlights against the white mantle of snow; he thinks of the car as a robot, and no matter what happens the robot is programed to find its way home.

  Vibeke stares out the window as they rumble past the supermarket and the bus stop. She glances at the speedometer; it’s not because he’s driving that slow, it just feels like it because they were going so fast before. Her eyes look out beyond him at the lightless houses, the cars parked in the driveways, the curtains drawn in all the windows. She sees a dog, stock-still at a front door, staring up at the handle, wanting in. Something tells her it’s been waiting for some time.

  “Here we are,” she says, pointing as they approach.

  He pulls up and leaves the engine running. She looks across at the windows. The living room is faintly lit, she knows it’s the light on in the hall. Apart from that, the windows are all dark. She thinks how empty they look, her plants always die on her. She hasn’t bought any curtain material yet, blaming the limited choice, but the truth is she doesn’t much care for curtains, they blur the lines of the room.

  “It’s nicer inside than it looks from here.”

  She isn’t afraid of him.

  He says nothing, but sits there, slightly inclined toward the front of his seat, with his head lowered, staring at the steering wheel. He turns and looks at her.

  “Should be getting back, get some sleep before the day starts.”

  She looks at him with eyes she feels gleam with consideration and respect. Most likely he’s got more inhibitions than seem apparent. She studies him, her eyes passing over his face one last time, the thickness of his hair.

  “Take good care,” she says. “Promise?”

  She emphasizes each word to make him feel she means it, that it’s not just something she says.

  He smiles faintly.

  She unfastens her seat belt, allowing it to snap back as she lets go. She finds the latch and pulls the black plastic handle back. The lock releases with a click, the cold air assailing her calves and thighs as she opens the door and swings her legs out. The vehicle’s elevation obliges her to slide downward until her feet reach the ground. She twists around and leans back inside, picking up her bag from the leg space. He looks out at the road in front.

  She closes the door, though not hard enough. He leans across, opens it again and shuts it properly. Their eyes meet before he leans back. He puts the car into gear, it rolls gently forward then pulls away as he puts his foot down.

  Vibeke wanders toward the house. She stops and looks back in the direction he drove off, his red rear lights leaving their rose-colored trail in the snow. He heads north without turning around, as if he knows the road leads back to the highway again. Maybe he’s been here before after all. She can’t figure him out. His eyes were so intelligent.

  She opens her bag and rummages for a moment, her fingers icy cold. Then she remembers she put the key in her coat pocket. She finds it and gets it out.

  THEY TURN IN AT the council offices, following the road through the little wood to the community center and the sports ground. It’s not a real wood, Jon thinks to himself, just a few birch trees, that’s all. The fairground lights are still on, their colors shining brightly in the dark night. Jon thinks it looks like a colony from outer space camped out on Earth, the lights are a shield of death rays protecting them from intruders. The woman backs in next to a pile of snow, then switches off the engine and the headlights, leaving the heater on. She lights another cigarette and exhales calmly while staring at the lights. She looks sad, Jon thinks. The light bulbs fleck the snow with color. He thinks of how the flecks can be seen but if you try to touch them they vanish.

  “Let me smoke this, then I’ll take you home. Okay?”

  She smiles faintly. Jon thinks she looks just as sad when she smiles. He swivels around and peers through the rear window. More birch trees, here and there some fir. A carrier bag and some empty beer bottles lie strewn around a shallow pit in the snow, its edges blackened by fire.

  Vibeke drapes her coat over the chair by the phone, goes into the bathroom and sits down on the toilet. She leans forward, her elbows against her knees. Life is so wonderful and strange, she thinks to herself with a smile and shakes her head.

  Another car turns in at the council offices, passing between the council building and the community center. It’s a big four-wheel drive like the one they saw on the road before they turned back to the village. It rolls up next to the fairground entrance and stops. The driver switches off the headlights and engine. A man climbs out with a black leather jacket on and a head full of curly blond hair. He shuts the door behind him, opens and shuts it again. He lingers for a moment, at one point turning his head so Jon feels he’s looking straight at them. Then after a second he walks away. He steps lightly, Jon thinks. His walk’s nearly a skip.

  The man goes in through the entrance, disappearing from view among the rides, dissolving into the dark.

  The woman stubs her cigarette out in the little compartment. It’s full of old ends and ash. She glances at Jon out of the corner of her eye, hardly turning her head. She doesn’t want to look at me, he thinks. He feels with his hand to see if he’s been drooling again. He can sense he’s blinking. He tries not to. There’s no spit from his mouth.

  She says she thinks his mom’s home again now. She can feel it, she says, she’s almost certain.

  “Do you want me to drop you off?”

  Jon thinks he can tell from her voice she doesn’t want to.

  “I’ll walk,” he says. “It’s not far and I know the way.”

  “As long as you’re sure?” she says.

  Jon says he’ll be fine and gets out. She leans over and locks his door, then gets out herself and locks her own.

  For a moment everything is still.

  The snow creaks under their feet as they walk from the car. She thanks him for the company, scrutinizing him for a second, her head tilted slightly to the side, before turning around and walking away through the lit-up entrance in the same direction as the man, across the deserted fairground. The white wig is in her hand, its long hair trailing on the ground as she disappears behind a trailer.

  He stamps his feet, a series of dull, echoing thuds. When he stops, the silence is even clearer. He wonders if sounds are bigger in the cold. And if it was cold enough whether sound could make the planet explode.

  HE CUTS BETWEEN THE council offices and the supermarket, following the path that’s been trampled in the snow. He pretends he’s just landed on Earth. All the people are dead. Killed by death rays. He hurries between the buildings, scurrying in the direction of the road. The tips of his ears are cold. He must have left his knit cap somewhere, he had it when he came out. He puts his hands to his ears to warm them up. He forces himself not to see the trees, the forest; whenever he’s on his own it’s like there’s always someone standing there.

  Vibeke goes into the bedroom. She sets the alarm clock, flipping open the little cover to set the switch while trying not to look at what time it is. Knowing would only keep her awake, thinking about how soon she has to be up again. She puts the alarm clock down on the floor. The blind is already down, it’s been down all day. She undresses with her eyes closed, as if to lull herself to sleep. She pulls the duvet aside and gets into bed, tucking it tight around her body and legs. She tries to focus her mind on slow, deep breathing, a technique she learned on a course she was on with her previous job. The trick is to consciously relax, starting with the toes then moving upwards through the body section by section. By the time she gets to her head she already feels drowsy. She sees the brown eyes of the engineer from the building department.

  Jon pauses outside the house where the girl lives. He looks up at the window he thinks must be the room he looked into from the doorway upstairs. The curtains are open, but there’s no light on. The lamp above the bed must have been switched off. He glances around then looks again, but there’s no one looking back at him.

  On the other side of th
e road a path leads past the houses into the forest. A hundred meters along the path there’s a slope with floodlights put up. The smaller children play there on their baby skis, they pretend it’s real skiing. Jon was there not long ago with one of the boys from his class, the boy had borrowed a sledge trailer from someone’s snowmobile without asking. There must have been ten of them on it, hurtling down the hill until they got stuck or crashed, tumbling out into the snow, its icy crystals penetrating under their collars and scarves. Maybe someone’s there now, he thinks. He decides to go up the bank around the back of the houses and see. If I do that, he tells himself, mom will be home when I get back.

  THE COLD NIPS AT his ears and forehead. He stands on top of the bank behind the houses and peers toward the forest. Ahead, the floodlights illuminate the slope. He thinks he hears voices, but there’s no one there to see.

  The snow under the lights is amber and bronze, inkier in the dips where the shadows fall. It doesn’t look at all frightening. The forest all around is still. Jon thinks if he goes to the floodlights he’ll have won for doing something he was scared of.

  He picks his way between the footprints and ski tracks, treading only where the snow is untouched. He breathes a rhythm to sound like a train.

  He looks up and sees he’s only halfway. Perhaps it’s further than he thought. He tells himself he mustn’t look before the ground starts sloping upwards.

  The last bit is steep, but he wants to save the view until he’s gotten to the top. His legs are numb. The wind creeps under his coat. His old one had a drawstring he could pull tight, but this one’s different.