“Oh, people always say that, then they see the fjord for the first time, they smell the sloping fjell and taste the water, and suddenly their very important job in the city fades to meaninglessness, and I nearly have to send in the army to evict them. So let’s say four weeks, just in case, and then I won’t have to be cross if you stay longer than you intended. Now, Aud, why don’t you explain to your polite friend what all this food is and I’ll go get the key.”
We watched her stride out of the room. Julia smiled. “Better do as she says or she’ll eat you.”
“A few years ago I believed she could. So. Pass me that plate with the cheese on it. This is geitost, goat’s cheese. You can put it on these crackers. It has a toasty, caramel flavour. I think you’d like it. The salmon you eat with the cucumber salad. You might find that a bit sweet. This ham you can wrap in lompe, which is that soft flatbread over there.”
“And this?”
“Gravadlax, buried salmon. A great delicacy.” Only Hjørdis would serve it along with geitost. “Try it if you feel brave.”
“And this?” She lifted a dish of little, pale round things.
“Rolled cod’s tongues.”
The dish went back on the table with a bang, but then she picked it up again. “How do you eat them?”
“With one of these.” I held up a long-handled silver fork with three tiny tines. “Pass the pickle castor. That crystal and silver thing on wheels.” She trundled it over. I used the tiny silver tongs to transfer a few of the silverskin onions to my plate, then skewered one with the fork, then a cod’s tongue and popped them in my mouth. I savoured the texture and bite. “You dip them in rømme, that sour cream there.”
She spooned some onto her plate and was just dipping a tongue when Hjørdis came back. Julia, wearing her poker face, put the whole thing in her mouth and chewed. After a second or two, she looked relieved. Hjørdis laughed. “Such a pleasant surprise to see an American enjoy good, wholesome food. Now. Aud.” Julia heard the suddenly formal tone and sat up straight. “Here is the key. You’re lucky. Your mother phoned up yesterday and told me you might be wanting it. I phoned Gudrun at the farm and she will be airing everything out for you, so you will be comfortable, but next time try give me a little more notice.” She handed it over. It was big and made of black iron, and very cold. She probably kept it in the cellar. The business of the key to the family seter was purely ceremonial—the back door and windows did not even have locks—but Hjørdis took her duties as eldest family member quite seriously. “Now, eat, and Aud can tell me why she has stayed away so long, and you, Julia, can tell me all about this business of yours.”
We never did get out to dinner. I listened for hours as Julia talked about art; about Atlanta and how she had come back to the city, where her mother now lived, from Boston. I watched Hjørdis absorbing Julia with those bright eyes; agreeing with sharp nods and the occasional emphatic ha! when Julia talked about discrimination against women in business in the South. We drank homemade tyttebaer wine with the meal, and Hjørdis’s face flushed, and Julia relaxed and talked with her hands. As the sun went down and left candlelight wavering over brow and throat, wrist and mouth, it seemed for a moment that they could be almost the same age: two women, enjoying a conversation.
We walked back to the Bristol, but slowly. There was very little traffic, and a sharp breeze blew in from the fjord. No unusual sounds, no unusual scents. “You were quiet tonight,” she said.
“Yes.”
Sound of breath and boots. “I liked Hjørdis. And she seems to mean a great deal to you.”
“She’s my aunt.” Hjørdis had always been part of my life, always there in her wooden house when my mother was busy and my father out of the country. When I was in England, I wrote to her every week, and every week she wrote back. “My father told me once that she had fought in the Resistance during the Second World War.”
“You’ve never asked her?”
“If she had wanted me to know, she would have told me.”
“Is everything in Norway left so…unspoken? I’m glad you’ll be with me tomorrow when I go to Olsen Glass. You can tell me afterwards what each particular silence really meant.”
“Nothing is unspoken in business. It’s all very straightforward. Telling the truth, and nothing but the truth, is the cardinal rule.”
“What about the whole truth?”
“That, too.”
A momentary silence. “And do you believe in that, Aud Torvingen?”
“It depends on who I’m talking to.”
“You’re doing it again. I don’t think you’ve lied to me, exactly, but you keep information back.”
“What do you want to know?”
“You’ve been tense all the time we’ve travelled. I hadn’t even realized that until this evening when I saw you relax at Hjørdis’s house. Do you think I’m in danger even here, in Oslo?”
“I don’t know.” And that was what filled me with deep unease. “Reason tells me you are safe.”
“But you don’t believe it, do you?”
I had no idea how to explain that behind every tree, looming beyond every building I sensed the shadowy outline of Honeycutt’s puppet master, the blackmailer.
We were walking a little faster now, and Julia’s shoulders were hunched. “Ever since Honeycutt’s house, you’ve been different. I’ve seen the way you eye the doors, gauging their sturdiness, the way you check shop windows as we pass to make sure we’re not being followed. I’ve noticed that you always walk on the curb side of the sidewalk, and you make sure cars have fully stopped before you cross a street. Especially here, even though you told me I’d be safe in Norway.”
Reason dictated that I say, You are, but what came out was, “I’ll protect you,” which puzzled me, because it was not the same thing at all.
nine
It was only a mile and a half from the Bristol to Vigeland Park but it was a sunny morning and our route along Bogstadsveien was lively with galleries and art shops. Julia seemed to find them amusing. Even so, we still had to cross traffic and tram tracks every few meters to look through yet another shop window: “If I’m going to design a sculpture park for a Norwegian corporation I have to get some idea of what Norwegians like.”
She looked at the displays, I scanned the crowd.
“A lot of Neo-Romanticism,” she said.
“You should look in museums, not these tourist traps.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. You need to look at both sides. I couldn’t learn about Americans’ taste for art, and that art’s history, by touring MoMA. To explain sixties pop art, for instance, I’d have to know about Disney World and Coney Island and network television as well as the formal canvases that hang on museum walls. That’s what helps me understand what will become valuable in a few years, what will be a good investment.” And then she was distracted by a collection of dolls dressed in bunad, bright red traditional costumes with tiny silver buckles and earrings. “They’re all different.”
“Each region has its own traditional dress.”
“Do people really wear them?”
“Sometimes. On national holidays.” I didn’t like standing here with people brushing by on both sides.
“Did you have one?”
“Yes.”
“Did you wear it?”
“When I was confirmed.” She wasn’t going to move along until I gave her what she wanted. “I was thirteen. I wore it once. Lutheran church though, no, I’m not particularly religious. It was and is more of a cultural event. I have no idea where the bunad is now.”