Sometimes they talked while the dough was rising, Margrete liked to talk about his work at NRK, kid him about it, ask him about people, intrigues at Broadcasting House, scandals, although she seldom watched television. She, on the other hand, said next to nothing about her own job as a consulting physician with the Oslo Health Board — not because her work was confidential but because she preferred to switch off from it when she came home. Or because there were other things she would rather talk about. Often she would tell Jonas little stories — the most marvellous flights of fancy — which he suspected had been plucked from books, that being Margrete’s favourite pastime: reading. Which is to say, she did not read, she laid herself open to the writing. Other times, Margrete might take a bath while the dough was rising, she had an Archimedean affinity for bathtubs. If there was one thing that Jonas admired, and envied, in his wife it was her sense for what are known as ‘the little things in life’. Margrete possessed a unique awareness of, and took a singular delight in, the things with which she surrounded herself: everything from an arrangement of flowers in a vase on the table in the living room to the toilet paper in the bathroom. ‘You only have to look at something for long enough for it to become interesting,’ she would say. And she had an even more exceptional gift for turning the daily round into a work of art; an expression such as ‘the tedium of everyday life’ was totally alien to her. To Margrete, every occurrence, even those that were repeated again and again, was a small miracle, a ceremony out of which she squeezed every drop of goodness. The way Jonas saw it, Margrete did for day-to-day life what Einstein had done for mass; she discovered, or disclosed, its energy. Those things which to others were blind routine, were for Margrete a whole succession of sensations: waking up, stretching, sniffing bodily odours, getting washed. Cutting her nails was a ritual in itself, a sort of minor engineering project. Getting dressed was like a ballet, not of pleasure but of concentration, as if her mind was constantly on the job, giving it great thought. After breakfast she would tune in to, take delight in, the workings of her bowels. Margrete could even turn a trip into town on the subway into an eye-opening experience. She particularly enjoyed the gardens on the aboveground stretch between Risløkka and Økern, the way they changed with the seasons.
But more often than not they went through to the bedroom and made love. There was nothing quite like making love while the dough rose. Margrete pulled off jeans and a floury sweater and made love to him in a way she only did when she was baking bread, with firm hands and a tense expectancy, taking a long time over it — as long as it takes for a batch of dough to rise.
Afterwards, Margrete would go back to the kitchen and remove the tea towel from the bowl, proudly, as if unveiling a monument, because the dough had risen, and Jonas would sit back down on his chair and watch how she kneaded the dough, passionately almost, as if she were still making love, or touched by their lovemaking, before dividing it into portions, placing each one in an old baking tin brushed with olive oil to give the bread a nice crust. Jonas would sit and watch her, say something to her, usually something banal, something hopelessly, ineptly banal, that almost always expressed how much he loved her and which always caused her to send him a long, lingering look, to walk over to him, barefoot, pensively, while the loaves rested again. Then she would brush them with egg and put them in the oven. And he would not get up but would go on sitting there while the scent of Margrete’s bread filled the kitchen and it grew dark outside, slowly, as it does when Norway is at its best.
Jonas especially liked to watch Margrete taking the finished loaves out of the baking tins and tapping them as if she were listening for just the right note. He took even greater enjoyment in seeing how happy, how truly happy she was when the bread was acceptable, although as far as she was concerned it could never be absolutely perfect. Occasionally he sat on, gazing at the loaves ranged on their rack, the sheen of the crust, how they almost seemed to glow, and he could not rid himself of the thought that this might be the Golden Fleece for which he had always been searching, that it might be that simple, that close at hand. In any case, the bread was precious to Margrete. She gave away loaves as Christmas presents, wrapped in tea towels and tied up with ribbon.
It is evening, spring, soon it will be dark outside. Kristin is asleep in her room. Jonas is already looking forward to breakfast, to Margrete’s bread. To Jonas, this is happy married life: looking forward to breakfast. Jonas experienced many great and exciting things in his life, and yet given the choice, there was nothing to match breakfast with Margrete, her bread with wild raspberry jam and a glass of milk.
A First Reader
Now where was I? Ah yes, I was about to tell you how Jonas Wergeland caught, or rather, was held spellbound, by the sight of his parents in the act. In actual fact, however, it all started some months earlier, on the day on which Nefertiti hinted to Jonas that the piece of furniture which he referred to simply as ‘the bookcase’ actually contained treasures beyond price in more ways than one.
Jonas and Nefertiti were stretched out on the floor, playing and listening to Duke Ellington, ‘Me and You’ and ‘So Far, So Good’ and ‘At a Dixie Roadside Diner’ and Jimmy Blanton’s swinging bass and, above all else, Ivie Anderson’s lazy croon; Jonas thought he might be a little bit in love with Ivie Anderson who, according to Nefertiti, had had to give up singing because she was asthmatic and who had also happened to play a mean game of poker. Jonas and Nefertiti were playing with those plastic cowboy and Indian figures that had just come on to the market, with revolvers which, wonder of wonders, could be pulled out of holsters, and bows and arrows that could be detached from the hands. Nefertiti was always an Indian, she particularly liked showing Jonas how the Indians had attacked General Custer at the battle of Little Big Horn, occasionally telling him something about Red Indian customs and rituals, about their sand paintings for instance. Jonas was just in the act of chasing a couple of Indians all the way into the bookcase when Nefertiti’s eyes suddenly widened and she took a book from the shelf. She blew the dust off it as if it were smoke from a revolver, opened it and nodded: ‘This is very valuable,’ she said. Jonas thought she was kidding. It was just an old book, nothing special about it. Nefertiti pulled out another one and said the same thing. This went on for some time.
At this point I ought perhaps to say something about Jonas’s family’s attitude to books. His parents did not read at all. Rakel had merely ploughed her way through the edition of the Arabian Nights given to her by Aunt Laura, and Daniel and Jonas read, or flicked through, nothing but comics. Their living room had been bare of bookshelves until the day when some boxes, quite a lot of them in fact, turned up from the western part of the country. Somebody in his mother’s family had died, some fairly distant and childless relative; some other, even more distant, relative had divided up the estate and by sheer chance — that much I can divulge — the boxes of books were sent to Åse Hansen. This came as a complete surprise to Jonas’s mother; nonetheless, she went out and bought some cheap bookcases and placed the books on them, mainly to brighten up the walls, a bit like wallpaper.
‘Wow! This one ought to be locked up in a safe.’ Nefertiti’s eye were just about popping out of her head. Jonas looked on, mystified, as she moved the books around, arranging those she had pulled off the shelves in order, a couple of dozen volumes ranged in a row, leather spines embossed with faded gilt lettering. ‘Jonas, these books are actually worth a fortune. Take good care of them.’ She eyed him gravely as if this were a matter of a last will and testament, something she was bequeathing to him. As, of course, it was, although Jonas did not know it then. Nefertiti kept her eyes fixed on him until she was sure that her words had sunk in. Then they went on with their game. And Jonas did remember, although it would be many years before he acted more systematically on this tip.