'I think I'm going on the wagon,' said Zipp gloomily. This made Andreas burst out laughing because the idea was preposterous. Then the moment passed, the mood lifted, and Zipp erased the bloody image from his mind. For a while they drove in silence.
'Were you with the Woman yesterday?' Out of the corner of his eye Zipp glanced at Andreas' thigh in the light-coloured slacks.
'Yes, I was,' he replied. Zipp heard the smile in his voice, and the warning not to ask anything more. Not that it was a secret. He had plainly told Zipp that they were sleeping together. Or had he?
Maybe he was just pulling his leg. Andreas was so secretive, so difficult to work out.
'I can't understand why you bother,' laughed Zipp.
'A few extra kroner,' said Andreas curtly. His voice didn't sound annoyed, but there was a wariness to his tone. 'You're always so thirsty.' And then he added, with great pathos: 'I'm doing it for us, Zipp.'
Zipp tried to listen for everything he wasn't saying. Andreas was modelling for an artist. She painted him in the nude. Zipp tried to imagine what pose he took, whether he was lying on a sofa or sitting on a chair, or maybe standing up in some impossible position. He hadn't dared to ask. But Zipp was curious. The thought of taking off his clothes in front of a woman and letting her look at him while he stood there, passive, made him uncomfortable. Of course they had sex afterwards. According to Andreas. But the feeling, thought Zipp, of having to stand there, motionless, while the Woman examined his body in every detail. Not that he was shy of it. He wasn't fat or too small, or anything like that. But to be observed like that, by a woman.
'Isn't that damned painting ever going to be finished? You've been going there for months.'
Zipp inhaled more smoke. Without understanding why, he sensed that he had approached somewhere dangerous. At the same time he felt compelled to go on. It occurred to him that he had never seen Andreas get angry. He was always calm, soft-spoken and reassuringly the same. For eleven years he had been the same.
'It takes a year to make a good painting,' Andreas said firmly, as if he were instructing a child. He twisted the ends of his scarf. They matched his shirt.
'A whole fucking year? Well, then you've got a whole lot of shit ahead of you.'
Zipp flicked the ash from his cigarette out of the window. 'Just think if she gets famous and they hang the painting up so that God and everybody else can see it. In the bank, for example. Or at the Saga cinema. Shit, that would really do me in.' Zipp put the car in neutral. Andreas patiently watched the red light.
'No-one will recognise me,' he said, his voice calm.
'No? Is it one of those Picasso things with both ears on the same side of the head?'
Andreas uttered a weary laugh at his friend's boundless ignorance.
'It's going to be a good painting,' was all he said.
'How old is this chick, anyway?'
Andreas winked. 'Old enough to know more tricks than any of the schoolgirls you hang out with.' This was the kind of remark that Zipp loved. Anything that referred to his performance in bed, of which he had the highest regard. Oh yes!
'You whoring pig,' he sneered. 'Is it possible for a choirboy like you to learn any tricks?' That was when Andreas turned to face him, just as the light went green. He looked Zipp up and down, from his bristly hair that refused to lie flat, to his turned-up nose and the cleft in his chin, to his plump thighs and the ridiculous tight jeans he always wore. Stretch to fit. But the small head and powerful torso reminded Andreas of what Zipp really was. A stud. He started sweating. Andreas sat there, assessing him, his body, every last detail. And he rejected it! Zipp wouldn't have a chance with the Woman.
Zipp regretted having started this conversation. This is how it always ended up. He would try, but he never got anywhere. If only he had some damn money for a beer! Surreptitiously he studied his companion. Andreas had style. He wore widelegged trousers and baggy shirts. Nothing gaudy. Moccasins on his feet, never running shoes. In the summer he rolled up his sleeves and unbuttoned his shirt. But always loose clothing, light-coloured and lightweight. His clothes seemed to flutter about him, making him look slimmer and lankier even than he was. Zipp squeezed the exact same number of kilos, 63, into tight jeans and T-shirts that fit him like a second skin. Above them he wore a leather jacket. It was short-waisted and wide in the shoulders, but somehow it didn't give him the athletic look he was after. Instead it gave him a puffed-up look. This surprised him, because he wasn't overweight. He was slightly bowlegged and he had a ponytail, but his appearance was pretty ordinary. He envied Andreas his style and elegance, but he couldn't emulate it. The effect wouldn't be the same. Not that he was unlucky with the ladies. But even in that department Andreas had overtaken him. He ignored them. Except for the Woman. And Zipp still didn't know how old she was. Thirty? Or more? Forty, or fifty even? Zipp had an aunt who was 50. The thought gave him the creeps. A 50-year-old woman. With children and stuff like that. How did women look – down there – after they'd squeezed out a brood of children?
They had to look different from girls.
'Does she have any children?' the question slipped out.
'Quite a few,' Andreas said, nodding. 'Four or five.'
'Shit, there must be plenty of room inside a bitch like that, huh?'
Andreas rolled up the window, and a sour little smile appeared on his face.
'I've seen things you wouldn't believe.'
'What's that supposed to mean?'
'They're much, much deeper, Zipp.' High above the town, with a view of the river, stood an imposing house from the early twentieth century. In need of repair here and there, but the green panelling was still holding up to all kinds of weather. This was where the artist Anna Fehn lived. One evening in early summer she was wandering around in the town square, observing people. She had a trained eye. Most people aren't especially attractive, she thought. Most of them are a random selection of genes from the two sets which served as the basis for their existence. Long arms and legs from the father, tiny hands and feet from the mother. Almost no-one comprises a harmonious whole. Almost no-one makes an impression. Yet she knew that it wasn't a matter of heavy or light, rough or fine, but how they carried themselves, how they moved. With a consciousness of who they were, and with pride as the dominant force, or squeezed into a nature, a form, they refused to acknowledge. But then she caught sight of Andreas. At an outdoor cafe with someone. Her first thought was that he looked bored. Life wasn't enough for him. There was something important that he had yet to find. Not original – the same was true of most people. But he wasn't sitting there with the usual gaping expression, forever turning his head to look at girls, or preoccupied with whether anyone might be looking at him. He sat there in utter peace, with his long legs stretched out under the table. Anna took in the leather shoes on the pavement, the cotton shirt against his pale skin. His hair moved very faintly; his slender fingers were wrapped around his glass. He was practically lying in his chair, which was tilted on to its back legs. To be able to sit like that, perfectly balanced, at risk of toppling over and banging his head on the concrete, and yet he looked so relaxed. So uninterested. So impregnable. It made an impression on her. She looked at his companion. They seemed an unlikely pair. Both of them had downed the best part of a pint, but they weren't yet drunk. Otherwise they looked like most young people their age. Didn't belong to any specific group, not headbangers or punks, but just ordinary boys of around 20 years old. Yet Andreas had a lazy elegance about him and a splendid head of hair reaching to his shoulders. She tried to define the colour. If she mixed carmine, burnt sienna, and a light ochre, and then added some ivory nuances, she might come close. Anna moved nearer. If she divided his face up into sections, the way artists do – the forehead, cheeks, eyes, jaw – it struck her that he wasn't strikingly handsome in the classic sense. His eyes were set a little too deep, his nose was long and narrow and crooked and at the tip it bent down towards his mouth, which was a bit too small, but evenly shaped and nice- looking. His chin was narrow and jutted out. Over his left eyebrow he had a birthmark, exactly on his hairline. Yet, taken together, his features made a strong impression. Impossible to ignore. He was thin, long-limbed and well- defined, in spite of his young age. She played with the idea of how he would look naked. There was something about young boys that disappeared as they crossed the boundary to become grown men. That moment when their bodies hesitated, just before that last step towards adult gravity. He was at that point right now. His skin had a sheen to it that reminded her of cream. He was either a university student or a young man in his poorly paid first job. Undoubtedly he needed money. For a moment she turned her back to him and stared at a lit-up window, at a dress that she couldn't afford. No, be honest, it's too short for you! She laughed at herself and then turned back. She didn't want to approach him as long as his friend was there, in case it might embarrass him. So she waited patiently. Sooner or later one of them would need to find the toilet below the square. While she waited, she placed him in the pose she instinctively thought would show him at his best. That lazy, casual expression was also a pose,
