Svarstad reappeared. "Green light from the bank," he said. He was lobster red, but his eyes shone beneath the bushy brows.
"Excellent," Gunder said.
After work he went into town and found a jewellery shop. He stared at the glass counter containing rings, only rings. He asked to be shown the national costume silver and the assistant asked him what kind.
Gunder shrugged. "Well, anything. A brooch, I think. It's a present. But she doesn't have a Norwegian national costume."
"You only wear filigree brooches with a national costume," pronounced the woman in a school-mistressy tone.
"But it has to be something from Norway," Gunder said. "Something essentially Norwegian."
"For a foreign lady?" the assistant wanted to know.
"Yes. I was thinking she would wear it with her own national costume."
"And what sort of costume is that?" she asked, her curiosity increasing.
"An Indian sari," said Gunder proudly.
Silence behind the counter. The assistant was evidently torn as to what she should do. She was not unaffected by Gunder's charming stubbornness and she could hardly refuse to sell him what he wanted to buy. On the other hand the Norwegian Craft Council did have rules as to what was permissible. However, if a woman wanted to wander about in India wearing a filigree brooch on a bright orange sari, then the Craft Council would be none the wiser. So she got out the tray with the national costume silver and selected a medium-sized filigree brooch, wondering if the strangely self-possessed customer was aware of how much it was going to cost.
"How much is that one?" Gunder said.
"Fourteen hundred kroner. To give you an idea, I can show you this one from Hardanger. We have bigger brooches than this one and smaller ones, too. However, there is often quite a lot of gold in those saris, so I suppose it ought to be plain – if it's to have the desired effect."
Here her voice took on an ironic twist, but she suppressed it when she saw Gunder. He took the spiralling brooch from the velvet and held it in his rough hands. Held it up to the light. His face took on a dreamy expression. She softened. There was something about this man, this heavy, slow, shy man, that she warmed to in spite of everything. He was courting.
Gunder did not want to look at any other brooches. He would only begin to have doubts. So he bought the first one, which was anyway the best, and had it wrapped. He planned to unwrap it when he got home and admire it again. In the car on his way back he drummed on the wheel as he imagined her brown fingers opening the package. The paper was black with tiny specks of gold. The ribbon around the box was blood red. It lay on the seat next to him. Perhaps he needed to get some pills for the trip. For his stomach. All that foreign food, he thought. Rice and curry. Spicy and hot as hell. And Indian currency. Was his passport valid? He was going to be busy. He had better call Marie.
The village where Gunder lived was called Elvestad. It had 2,347 inhabitants. A wooden church from the Middle Ages, restored in 1970. A petrol station, a school, a post office and a roadside café. The café was an ugly cross between a hut and a raised storehouse; it stood on pillars and steep steps led up to the entrance. On entering you immediately faced a jukebox, a Wurlitzer which was still in use. On the roof was a red and white sign with the words EINAR'S CAFÉ. At night Einar switched on the light in the sign.
Einar Sunde had run the café for seventeen years. He had a wife and children and was in debt up to his eyeballs because of his grandiose chalet-style villa just outside the village. A licence to sell beer had meant that he was at last able to meet his mortgage payments. For this simple reason there were always people in the café. He knew the villagers and ran the place with an iron hand. He pretty soon found out which year most of the young people were born in and would put his hand over the beer tap if they tried it on when they were still underage. There was also a village hall, where weddings and confirmations were celebrated. Most of the villagers were farmers. Added to that were quite a few newcomers, people who had fled the city having entertained a romantic notion of a quieter life in the country. This they had got. The sea was only half an hour away, but the salty air did not reach the village; it smelled of onions and leeks, or the rank smell of manure in the spring and the sweet smell of apples in the autumn. Einar was from the capital, but he had no longing to go back. He was the sole proprietor of the café. As long as he had the café there wasn't a living soul who would dare try setting up within miles. He would run this café until they carried him out in a box. Because he managed to prevent excessive drinking and fights, everyone felt comfortable going in there. Women for coffee and pastries, kids for frankfurters and Coke, young people for a beer. He aired the place properly, emptied the ashtrays and replaced the nightlights whenever they burned down, kept it impeccably clean. His wife washed the red and white chequered tablecloths in the machine at home. True, the place lacked style, but he had drawn the line at actual kitsch. There were no plastic flowers. He had recently invested in a bigger dishwasher to save him having to wash the glasses by hand. The health inspector was welcome to visit his kitchen, it was fit for use as far as the equipment and cleanliness went.
It was here, in Einar's Café, that people kept abreast of what was going on in the village. Who was seeing whom, who was in the process of getting a divorce and which farmer might any second now have to sell up. A single minicab was at the villagers' disposal. Kalle Moe drove a white Mercedes and could be contacted by landline or mobile, always sober and always available. If he wasn't, he would get you a minicab from town. As long as Kalle Moe operated his minicab service in the village, there was no room for any other licence. He was past sixty and there were many waiting in the wings.
Einar Sunde was at his café six days a week till ten o'clock in the evening on weekdays. On Saturdays he stayed open until midnight, on Sundays the café was closed. He was a hard worker, moved quickly, a beanpole of a man with reddish hair and long thin arms. A tea towel was tucked into his waistband; it was replaced the moment it was stained. His wife, Lillian, who hardly ever saw him except at night, lived her own life and they had nothing in common any more. They couldn't even be bothered to argue. Einar didn't have time to dream of something better, he was too busy working. The chalet-style villa was worth 1.6 million kroner and had a sauna and a gym, which he never had the time to use.
All or part of the village's hard core hung out at the café. It consisted mostly of young men aged between eighteen and thirty, with or without girlfriends. Because Einar had a licence to sell beer, they never went into town to meet girls from further away. You could walk home from the café, the village was no bigger than that. They would rather have a few more beers than pay for an expensive minicab from town. So they married local girls and stayed here. However, before it got to that, the girls were passed around. It created a peculiar solidarity, with many unwritten rules.
Following a great deal of debate in the local council, Elvestad had acquired a shopping centre, as a result of which the local shop, Gunwald's one-stop shop, was languishing next to the Shell petrol station. Within the shopping centre some brave soul had set up shop with two sun beds, another had opened a florist's and a third a small perfumery. On the floors above were surgeries for the doctor and the dentist, and Anne's hair dressing salon. None of the young people from the village went there. Their hair had to be cut in town. Studs and rings in belly buttons and noses were also taken care of in town. Anne knew their parents and had been known to refuse. The older people, however, loyally shopped at Gunwald's. They came with their granny trolleys and ancient grey rucksacks and bought hashed lung and blood pudding and soft, sharp cheese. It was a good business for Ole Gunwald. He had paid off his mortgage ages ago.