During the day I read in bed, once in a while Geir came down, then we went out for lunch, and in the evenings I wrote or I ran or I caught the train to Geir and Christina’s, to whom I had become quite attached in the course of these two weeks. Beside the conversation about literature and beside all the political and ideological topics Geir broached, we also talked continually about subjects that were closer to us. In my case the subject was inexhaustible, everything came up, from events in my childhood to my father’s death, from summers in Sørbøvåg to the winter I met Tonje. Geir was shrewd, he was on the outside and saw through everything, time after time. His story, which started to take form later, as though first of all he had to be sure I could be trusted, was the complete antithesis of mine. Whereas he came from a working-class home without any ambitions or as much as a single book on the shelves, I was from a middle-class home, with both my mother and my father having done courses as mature students to get on, and we had the whole of world literature at our fingertips. Whereas he was one of the boys who fought in the playground and was barred and sent to the school psychologist, I was one of the children who always tried to curry favour with the teacher by being as good as possible. Whereas he played with soldiers and dreamed of owning a gun one day, I played football and dreamed of turning professional one day. Whereas I ran for election as a school rep and wrote an essay about the revolution in Nicaragua, he was a member of a Home Guard cadet force and the youth wing of a conservative political party. Whereas I wrote a poem about the amputated hands of children and human cruelty after watching Apocalypse Now, he examined the possibility of becoming an American citizen to enlist in the US Army.
Despite all this, we were able to talk to each other. I understood him, he understood me, and for the first time in my adult life I could say what I thought to someone without reservations.
I decided to go for the crab and the seagull story, wrote twenty pages, wrote thirty, my short runs became longer and longer, and soon I ran all the way round Söder, while the kilos flowed off me and conversations with Tonje became fewer and fewer.
Then I met Linda and the sun rose.
I can’t find a better way to express it. The sun rose in my life. At first, as dawn breaking on the horizon, almost as if to say, this is where you have to look. Then came the first rays of sunshine, everything became clearer, lighter, more alive, and I became happier and happier, and then it hung in the sky of my life and shone and shone and shone.
The first time I set eyes on Linda was in the summer of 1999 at a seminar for new Nordic writers at Biskops-Arnö Folk High School, outside Stockholm. Standing outside a building with the sun on her face. Wearing sunglasses, a white T-shirt with a stripe across the chest and green military fatigues. She was thin and beautiful. She had an aura which was dark, wild, erotic and destructive. I dropped everything I was holding.
When I saw her for the second time six months had passed. She was sitting at a table in an Oslo café and was wearing a leather jacket, blue jeans, black boots and was so fragile, overwrought and confused that all I wanted to do was hold her in my arms. I didn’t.
When I came to Stockholm she was the only person I knew apart from Geir. I had her number, and the second day I was there I rang her from Geir and Christina’s flat. What had happened at Biskops-Arnö was dead and buried, there were no longer any feelings for her in me, but I needed contacts in town, she was a writer, she was bound to know many more, perhaps also someone with a place to live.
No one answered. I put the phone down and turned to Geir, who was pretending he hadn’t been following.
‘No one at home,’ I said.
‘Try again later then,’ he said.
I did. But no one ever answered.
With Christina’s help I put an advertisement in the Stockholm newspapers. Norwegian author seeks flat/place to write, it said, we had spoken for ages before arriving at this, they thought there were lots of culture vultures that would jump at the word ‘author’, and ‘Norwegian’ was synonymous with easy-going and harmless. They must have had a point because I was inundated with calls. Most of the flats I was offered were in the satellite towns outside Stockholm. I turned them down, there didn’t seem to be much point being stuck in a tower block somewhere in a forest, and while I waited for a better offer I moved into the Norstedts flat, then into the very feminine flat. After a week there an offer turned up: someone wanted to rent a flat in Söder, and I went there, waited outside the door, two women so similar they had to be twins, around fifty years old, stepped out of a car, I greeted them, they said they were from Poland and wanted to rent out the flat for at least a year, sounds very interesting, I said, come on up, they said, we can sign the contract straight away if you like it.
The flat was absolutely fine, one and a half rooms, around thirty square metres, kitchen and bathroom, acceptable standard, perfect location. I signed. But something nagged, something was wrong, I couldn’t work out what, walked slowly downstairs, stopped by the board with the list of the block’s occupants. First of all, I read the address, Brännkyrkgatan 92, there was something familiar about it, I had seen it somewhere, but where? Where? I wondered, scanning the list of names.
Oh, bugger it.
Linda Boström, it said.
A chill ran down my spine.
That was her address! Of course. I had written to her asking for a contribution for Vagant, and I had sent it to bloody Brännkyrkgatan 92.
What were the odds of that happening?
One and a half million people lived in this city. I knew one of them. I put an advertisement in the paper, get an interesting response from two complete strangers, Polish twins, and it turns out the flat is in the same block!
I sauntered down to the Metro station, squirmed nervously in my seat all the way home to my girly flat. What would Linda think if I moved into the floor above? That I was stalking her?
It was no good. I couldn’t. Not after the terrible business at Biskops-Arnö.
The first thing I did when I came in the door was to ring the Poles and say I had changed my mind, I didn’t want the flat after all, a better offer had come up, I was really sorry, I really was.
‘That’s fine,’ she said.
Back to square one.
‘Are you crazy?’ Geir said when I told him. ‘You’ve turned down a flat in the middle of Söder which, on top of everything else, was cheap, because you think someone you don’t really know might feel she was being stalked? Do you realise how many years I’ve spent trying to get my hands on a flat in the centre? Do you know how difficult it is? It’s impossible. Then you come along with a four-leaved clover up your arse and get one, then another, and then you say no!’
‘That’s how it is now anyway,’ I said. ‘Is it OK if I drop by occasionally? You feel a bit like my family. And if I come out here for Sunday lunch with you?’
‘Apart from the fact that it’s Monday, I have the same feeling. But I find it hard to make the father — son relationship fit. So it would have to be Caesar and Brutus.’
‘Which of us is Caesar?’
‘Don’t ask such a silly question. Sooner or later you’ll stab me in the back. But just come. We can continue talking out here.’