On the trolley there were several boxes. He sold books. I asked him what books, and he said, Maigret, Georges Simenon’s novels about Police Inspector Maigret, in Paris, in the eleventh arrondissement, he said, if I knew what an arrondissement was, and I said I did, I had been to Paris several times, to conferences. He opened one of the boxes he had on the trolley, and there they were, fifteen blue volumes, each with two novels inside and gold letters on the spine, and I asked how much they cost, and he said five hundred kroner. I bought them on the spot. I took a five-hundred note from my wallet and thanked him for the books and closed the door and went in and put the Maigret books on the floor beside the bed and crept back under the duvet. By the end of the week I had read them all, and when I got up I put the books back in the box and the box in the closet, on the shelf under the biscuit tin with the fishing gear in it.
Then I went to see the doctor.
When he saw me coming through the door, he went all cranky and said, where the hell have you been, weren’t you supposed to be here almost two weeks ago, how can I possibly find out what’s wrong with you if you don’t come and stand in the goddamn queue like everyone else, and then I wept a little on the chair, facing his desk, it was difficult not to, and there and then he wrote me an indefinite sick note and now I had been away from work for a whole year, to the day in fact, they were meticulous at the Social Security office. They had sent me a letter telling me that this was the end of my benefits. Now something new would have to be pulled from the hat, I was aware of that, a year had passed. It was the law, and that was the matter I had come here to discuss.
I walked between the tables in the Social Security office in Lillestrøm and stopped at a suitable distance from the despondent man facing the young woman at the desk. I could see only his back. It was broad and there was not much else but muscle under his shirt. He had his jacket over his arm, and a coat over the jacket, and he looked pretty warm now, his neck was red, his face white and embarrassed when he half turned and sent me a grey glance over his shoulder, the left one, and slowly shook his head, and turned back and said, right, right, that’s fine, that’s all fine, it will all be fine in the end young lady, don’t worry, in an ironic tone, so it was probably not fine at all. I’m not worried, the young woman said, and I couldn’t see her, but her voice cut like a scythe through the grass, and the man rolled his eyes and gave me a nod as he left. I nodded back, and it was my turn.
‘Just a moment,’ she said and started writing whatever she had to write on the form in the computer next to her. I didn’t know what was wrong with the man in front of me in the queue, but there had to be quite a bit because she kept writing for some time, and I was beginning to feel warm myself and thought maybe I should take my jacket off, but I knew that if I did, I had lost. I didn’t know what I would have lost, but I would have lost something.
At last she looked up from the computer.
‘Name and National Insurance number, please,’ she said, ‘and a little more too would be nice,’ she said with her eyes fixed on mine, though slightly out of focus, almost successfully hiding her lack of interest, and she was only doing her job, and in that rather uninterested way she let her gaze fall down along the buttons on my jacket, one, two, three, four, all the way back to the screen, where her fingertips hovered exactly two centimetres above the keyboard, waiting for me to give her the information. I had seen her before, the last time I was here, when she was new and a bit awkward, she wasn’t that now, and she didn’t recognise me. Why should she. I gave her my name and number, which I knew off by heart, not everyone did, and it felt like being in the army, I thought, when she turned to me the way she did, as they had done right after we had moved from the neighbourhood into Oslo, and I showed up for the military service health check at Akershus Fortress and was weighed and found too light. I wanted to join the army, to be sent to Helgelandsmoen, to Haslemoen or all the way up to Bardufoss in the north, in any case as far away as I could get from my mother and Grorud which was only a sad stopover between Mørk and what was perhaps the rest of my life, but I never went to any of those places because they didn’t want me. My hands probably trembled a little too much for their taste, and now I couldn’t help my back straightening as I stood there in the Social Security office. That was so typical me. I tried to loosen up, lower my shoulders, perhaps put my hands in my pockets, but then I was suddenly clenching my right hand, I opened it and clenched it and I opened it and clenched it again, I couldn’t stop myself, and I looked down, and my fist was so tightly knotted that the knuckles were sticking up like white mountain peaks, the Rockies, the Carpathians, and my nails were cutting into my palm, and I thought, did I forget to take my pills this morning. I couldn’t remember taking them, if I had taken them before or after I went fishing. But I never forgot to take them. That was why I couldn’t remember. You don’t remember what you never fail to do, that is common knowledge, and obviously I feared the consequences. I knew what could happen if I didn’t take the pills, and I thought, is that what is happening to me now, and I felt dizzy and leaned over and grabbed the edge of her desk with one hand, and she stared stiffly at my hand and said:
‘One year,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Then new rules apply. Do you understand. You can’t be off sick any longer.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know all that.’
‘Well, I sincerely hope you do,’ she said, and I thought, who is she to talk to me like that. If I had been Tommy I would have started swearing, I would have leaned forward with both hands on her desk, knuckles down, and said: What did you fucking say. But I wasn’t Tommy, I had barely used a swear word in my life, so instead I withdrew my hand and clenched it again. I closed my eyes and said:
‘I need to talk to someone in charge.’
‘You certainly do,’ she said.
I opened my eyes.
‘You can sit over there and wait,’ she said, pointing. ‘It’ll be a while.’
‘Do you think I’m an idiot,’ I said.
‘What.’
‘Do you think I’m an idiot.’
‘Oh, Christ,’ she said. ‘Just sit down,’ but I didn’t. I felt strangely giddy. My hearing’s gone, I thought. I cannot carry myself any more, I cannot raise myself. I cannot. It’s over. And that thought came as a great relief, like a gentle breeze, an open window, and I opened my hand, and my fingernails stopped digging into my palms, and I just let go.
Then finally I did as I was told. I walked over and sat down on one of the chairs by the wall, and already I felt different, lighter somehow, no, not lighter, airier maybe, something to do with space, room, receding walls. I was looser, yes, I felt looser. I had no idea what that meant, whether it was good for me or bad. But that wasn’t the point. Whether it was good or bad. The point was that it didn’t matter. That’s what was new.