Faces flushed with the cold, they stood in the stairwell smiling when I opened the door.
‘Hi there, old boy!’ Anders said. He was wearing a brown leather cap with ear flaps, a large blue Puffa jacket and smart black shoes. Elegant he was not, but in some bizarre way he still blended in with Helena, who with her white coat, black boots and white fur hat most definitely was.
Beside them sat their daughter in her buggy, examining me with a serious gaze.
‘Hi,’ I said, looking her in the eye.
Not a muscle moved in her face.
‘Come in!’ I said, retreating a few steps.
‘Can we bring the buggy in?’ Helena asked.
‘Of course,’ I answered. ‘Will it fit, do you think? Or should I open the second door?’
While Helena pushed the buggy forward and coaxed it into position between the door frames, Anders removed his outdoor clothing in the hall.
‘Where’s the señorita?’ he asked.
‘She’s having a lie-down,’ I said.
‘Everything OK?’
‘Yes, fine.’
‘Good!’ he said, rubbing his hands. ‘So bloody cold outside!’
Helena came through the door, her hands gripping the buggy handle tightly. She activated the brake and lifted her daughter out, took off her hat and unzipped the red romper suit while her daughter stood stock still on the floor. Underneath, the little girl wore a dark blue dress, white tights and white shoes.
Linda came in from the bedroom. Her face was beaming. First of all, she hugged Helena, they held the embrace for a long time and looked each other in the eye.
‘How pretty you look!’ Helena said. ‘How do you do it? I remember when I was in the ninth month…’
‘It’s just an old maternity dress,’ Linda said.
‘Yes, but all of you looks so nice!’
Linda smiled with pleasure, then leaned forward and gave Anders a hug.
‘What a spread!’ Helena exclaimed as she entered the living room. ‘Wow!’
I didn’t quite know what to do with myself so I went into the kitchen as if to check something or other while waiting for them to come down to earth. The next moment there was another ring at the door.
‘So?’ Geir said as I opened the door. ‘Have you finished cleaning the place up?’
‘Didn’t know you two were coming,’ I said. ‘Thought we said Monday, didn’t we? We’re having a New Year’s party here, so I’m afraid it’s not very convenient right now. But, well, perhaps we can squeeze you in…’
‘Hi, Karl Ove,’ Christina said, giving me a hug. ‘Everything all right with you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, stepping back to give them more room as Linda came through to welcome them. More hugs, more coats and shoes removed, everyone went into the living room, where Anders and Helena’s daughter, who had begun to crawl around, was a welcome focus of attention for the first few minutes until the situation settled.
‘You keep up the Christmas traditions, I see,’ Anders said, nodding towards the enormous tree in the corner.
‘It cost eight hundred kroner,’ I said. ‘It’s going to stand there for as long as there is any life in it. We don’t chuck money around in this house.’
Anders laughed.
‘The boss has started to crack jokes!’
‘I crack jokes all the time,’ I said. ‘It’s just you Swedes who don’t understand what I say.’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘At the beginning at any rate I understood nothing of what you said.’
‘So you bought yourselves a nouveau riche Christmas tree, did you?’ Geir said while Anders started speaking pidgin Norwegian in the way that is so common in Sweden and which consists of a high-pitched kjempe, meaning huge, an occasional gutt, boy, which to Swedish ears sounds so comical, all pronounced in an enthusiastic tone that rises at the end of every sentence. It had nothing to do with my dialect, which they therefore assumed was nynorsk.
‘It wasn’t planned,’ I said with a smile. ‘It’s a bit embarrassing to have such a big Christmas tree, I have to confess. But it seemed small when we bought it. It was only when we got it here that it became clear how enormous it was. But then I’ve always had problems with my sense of proportion.’
‘Do you know what kjempe means, Anders?’ Linda asked.
He shook his head.
‘I know avis, newspaper. And gutt. And vindu, window.’
‘It’s the same as jätte in Swedish, big, huge.’
Did Linda think I was offended, or what?
‘It took me six months to understand that,’ she continued. ‘It’s used in exactly the same way. There must be loads of words I think I understand, but I don’t. It hardly bears thinking about that I translated Sæterbakken’s book two years ago. At that time I couldn’t understand Norwegian at all.’
‘Could Gilda?’ Helena asked.
‘Her? No. She knew even less than me. But I had a look at it not so long ago, the first pages, and it seemed fine. Apart from one word that is. I blush whenever I think about it. I translated stue, living room, with stuga… so he was sitting in a stuga when the text said he was in a living room.’
‘What’s stuga in Norwegian then?’ Anders asked.
‘Hytte,’ I said.
‘Oh, it’s a hytte, a cabin! Yes, there’s certainly a difference then…’ he said.
‘But no one has remarked on it,’ Linda said. She laughed.
‘Anyone fancy some champagne?’ I asked.
‘I’ll fetch it,’ Linda said.
On her return she gathered the five glasses together and started to loosen the wire holding the cork in place. Her face was slightly averted and her eyes were narrowed, as though anticipating a huge explosion. In the end the cork came off into her hand with a wet plop, and then she held the bottle, with the champagne pouring out, over the glasses.
‘You managed that well,’ Anders said.
‘I worked in a restaurant a long time ago,’ Linda said. ‘But this was the one thing I could never do. I have no sense of depth anyway, so when I had to fill customers’ glasses, it was hit and miss.’
She straightened up and passed the sparkling, bubbly champagne to us one by one. For herself she poured a non-alcoholic variant.
‘Skål, then, and nice to see you!’
We toasted. When the champagne was finished I went into the kitchen to get the lobsters ready. Geir followed me and sat down at the table.
‘Lobster,’ he said. ‘It’s unbelievable how quickly you’ve adapted to Swedish society. I come to your place on New Year’s Eve two years after you moved here and you serve traditional Swedish New Year fare.’
‘I’m not exactly on my own,’ I said.
‘No, I know,’ he said with a smile. ‘We had a Mexican Christmas at home once, Christina and I did. Have I told you about it?’
‘Yes,’ I said and split the first lobster into two, placed it on a dish and started on the next. Geir began to talk about his manuscript. I listened with half an ear. Oh yes? I said now and then to signal that I was following even though my attention was elsewhere. He was unable to talk about his manuscript with everyone so it was only here he had the chance, and when I went out for a smoke, he saw his opportunity. He had written a rough draft, spent eighteen months on it, which I had read and commented on. The comments were comprehensive and detailed, they extended over ninety pages, and sadly the tone of the criticism was often sarcastic. I had imagined that Geir could take anything, but I should have known better, no one can take anything, and few things are as difficult to swallow as sarcasm when your own work is the target. But I couldn’t stop myself, it was the same when I wrote reader reports, irony was never far away. The problem with Geir’s manuscript, as he knew and admitted, was that the narrative was often too far removed from events, and a lot was often left unsaid. Only a fresh pair of eyes could remedy it. And that was what he got. But I was always ironic, much too ironic… was it perhaps caused by a subconscious desire on my part to get one over on him, the man who otherwise always reigned supreme.