“Faire l’amour,” said Morten. Both said they had wanted it for a long time, ever since they could remember even, but Kathrine wasn’t sure that was true. She was a little embarrassed to see Morten naked after knowing him for so many years. Once, when he was holding her from behind, she whispered to him to talk dirty to her. He did his best, but he wasn’t altogether successful, but that didn’t matter either.
“You’re not much of a Frenchman, are you,” she said. Then she cried a bit because she had a bad conscience. And when he asked her why, she said it was because she loved Thomas. And she wasn’t sure it wasn’t true.
“Was I good?” she asked later.
“Sweet Kathrine,” said Morten. “It’s not your fault.”
In the morning, Kathrine felt ashamed of what had happened, and she couldn’t believe she had asked Morten to talk dirty to her. But he was very nice to her again. In the bathroom, he kissed her on the neck, and that made her cry a little bit more.
She was already dressed. He was standing in his boxer shorts, making coffee. He was singing to himself, and she suddenly felt quite happy and thought she was quite justified in sleeping with him. They parted as friends, without any bad conscience, and without arranging anything for the future. Kathrine was careful not to let anyone see her leave the apartment. In the office, she was still thinking about Morten, because it had been a nice night.
That evening she spent at her mother’s, and the following evening Thomas was back. He asked her what she had done while he’d been away. She said, not much, she had been tired still after the holiday. They sat in the living room, Thomas watched television, Kathrine read a book. He asked her if she had gone to bed early, and not stayed up reading, and she said, yes, very early, and smiled. Then she said how she had spent yesterday at her mother’s, and what they’d talked about, that they’d gone for a walk, what her mother had made to eat. She looked at Thomas. He wasn’t listening. He was sitting quietly on the sofa, and from the side, he looked older than he really was. He would never ask her again about those two days, that evening and that night, she thought, and that’s how simple it was. She was astonished how easy she had found it to lie to him, but she didn’t feel guilty. She wondered too whether Thomas had lied to her, ever. Once, Veronica had talked about Einar having gone on a ski tour with Prince Hakon as a substitute ski teacher. That’s funny, said Kathrine, Thomas did the same thing. Then Veronica had changed the subject, and Kathrine hadn’t thought about it anymore. Now she wondered whether Thomas had made up the story, or stolen Einar’s story. Or whether Einar had lied. Or both of them.
She asked Thomas about his ski tour with the Crown Prince. He made an evasive reply, and finally asked with some irritation, when she didn’t let go of the matter, whether she doubted him.
“What’s the name of the computer game you devised?” asked Kathrine. “And what are the languages you speak? Say something to me in French.”
Soon after, Kathrine went up to bed. She heard the sound of the television for some time after that, the excited host on a sports show. Norway had won a couple of medals.
The next day, she called Morten and arranged to have lunch with him in the fishermen’s refuge. She told him the story of the ski teachers, and Morten thought it could be true. The Prince did ski, and celebrities often took ski teachers with them, when they went on long trips. When she told him about Thomas’s black belt, he thought Thomas didn’t look that type, and when she said he’d been a champion swimmer when he was a boy, Morten said that should be easy enough to check. They kissed each other good-bye on the cheek, as ever, but this time Morten put his hand on Kathrine’s hip, and stroked her briefly. That afternoon, he called her in the office and said Thomas had never been a champion swimmer. And the martial arts school he claimed to have attended in Tromso had no record of his name. And he didn’t have a doctorate either.
Kathrine thought about the many inconsistencies she had noticed in Thomas’s stories, for which she had never asked him to account, for which he had never offered to give her an account. In the days to come, she researched all she could, and checked every available detail of Thomas’s stories. And everything was a lie, everything was made up. On one of his running evenings, Kathrine followed Thomas. He ran along the main street. There had been a lot of snow that winter, and it lay in deep drifts. She followed him on her bicycle. She was afraid he might spot her, but he never looked round, he jogged on and seemed to be perfectly relaxed.
Just back of the village, where the airfield used to be, Thomas went off the road and ran across the broad field. His parents had a little hut up there, like many of the village families, either here or somewhere else on the fjeld, and that was where Thomas was making for. Kathrine watched, and saw him disappear into the hut. She left her bicycle by the side of the road. A track made by many footprints led across the snow. When Kathrine approached the hut, she walked very slowly and cautiously. She couldn’t hear anything. There was light in the windows, and she looked inside, and saw Thomas sitting at the table on his own. He sat there motionlessly in his tracksuit, staring into space. Kathrine put her head down, waited, looked in at the window again. Thomas was sitting there, just like before. Then he got up, put some wood in the stove, got a beer out of a crate in the corner, and sat down again.
The hut was furnished with old furniture that had been replaced in the family house and had been brought out here. They were used pieces from the 1970s, and the curtains were old and faded as well. There were black-and-white photographs on the walls, earlier generations of Thomas’s family. Serious-looking individuals in dark clothing, ships, the carcass of a whale on the ramp of an old port. Beside the doorway was an embroidered verse from the Bible. “Go ye home to the Lord, thy God, and hearken to His voice!”
Thomas sat there motionlessly. Kathrine shivered. She was bored. Half an hour later, Thomas was still sitting there, forty-five minutes, still. She returned to the road. When she reached her bicycle, she cast one more look back at the hut. After a while, the door opened, and Thomas stepped out into the snow. Kathrine pedaled quickly home.
She was only just back when a good-humored Thomas came in, saying he’d taken two minutes less than last time. Then he said he wouldn’t mind doing more sports, and he missed the contests. He told her about some of his triumphs, grabbed Kathrine’s forearms, and demonstrated a couple of grips. He didn’t even notice how cold her arms were. He laughed and said that when he’d left Tromso, he’d been the best fighter in the club. Then Kathrine said, you smell of beer, and I know you didn’t run to the airport.
She had followed him, she said, and he said, why, didn’t she trust him, and surely he could drink a beer without having to ask for permission. That wasn’t the point, Kathrine said, he had lied to her, he had been lying to her all along. But Thomas claimed he had only gone to the hut to check up on things there, his father had asked him to take a look at the stove, which wasn’t drawing properly. And when Kathrine drew up a list of his other lies, he replied with fresh claims, and she was convinced he was lying to her. He made wild claims, contradicted himself, his whole life story got mixed up. First he was furious, then he got quieter and quieter, but he didn’t give up. When Kathrine said she was leaving, all he said was that she would see he hadn’t lied, it was all a conspiracy, he had some powerful enemies. She said he was crazy, and she left.