‘What are you drinking?’
‘Until now it has been coffee and aquavit. But I can switch to anything.’
‘Actually I fancy a gin and tonic.’
‘I’ll join you then.’ I waved to the barman, who speedily took the order.
‘How,’ we both started, and I finished: ‘… is it going?’
‘With Silje?’
‘Yes, for example.’
‘Pretty well, I think. She’s got very capable parents. Or foster parents, I should say.’
‘Do you know them?’
‘Peripherally. But I’ve had Silje on my files ever since I came here.’
‘When was that?’
‘Five years ago. In 1979.’
‘But… you must have roots here?’
She chuckled. ‘Is it so obvious?’
The waiter came with our drinks. We said skal and tasted before I answered: ‘No, no. But I’ve heard you break into dialect when you’re talking to… locals.’
‘Yes, my mother came from here. But she found herself a man from Ostland, so I’ve spent all my life there. In Elverum of all places.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with Elverum, is there?’
‘No, no. I’m sure there are worse places. But tell me what you’ve been doing today. How was it in Jolster?’
I told her about that and the trip to Dale. To round off, I told her about the conversations with Langeland and Haavik.
She listened attentively. When I had finished, she said: ‘So everything points to Jan Egil being charged, I guess.’
‘All the evidence still suggests that it was Jan Egil who did it,’ I said. ‘Even though a few interesting details have emerged at the end of the day.’
‘I don’t know if I told you but… Silje was examined by a doctor today.’
‘Oh yes? And the results?’
‘She’s as healthy as a spring lamb. No injuries anywhere. But… she wasn’t a virgin, to put it in formal terms.’
‘She’s had it then, in informal terms.’
‘If that’s how you speak in Bergen, fine by me. But no signs of abuse, at any rate not recently.’
‘Well, well. So now we know that.’
She sipped from her glass, deep in thought.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘I was thinking… will you come home with me afterwards?’
I met her eyes. ‘If you invite me I…’
‘There’s something I want to show you,’ she said with a glint in her eye, as if there was something special she had learnt and wanted to show off.
‘Yes, you hinted something along those lines earlier today.’
Nevertheless, she was in no hurry. We finished our drinks, found the way to the night club and spent an hour on the dance floor there, most of the time moving to a gentle rhythm; touching was a natural part of the activity. We exchanged social services experiences and took stock of family circumstances: we each had an ex in the closet, she a daughter of fourteen, me thirteen-year-old Thomas in fitting congruity. She told me she had a seat on the local council, and when I asked for which party, she stepped back and said: ‘Guess!’ When I went for SV, the left, she smirked but refrained from commenting. In the end, we danced a few slow smooches, she with her arms around my neck and me with one hand between her shoulder blades and the other exploring the lower end of her spine, like a restless chiropractor at a health seminar improving his technique. Her body was warm and soft against mine, and I felt her lips against my ear, like slightly moist petals as she whispered: ‘Shall we order a taxi?’
‘Mm,’ I said into her hair, and with her arm under mine we left the dance floor.
I went up to the cloakroom to collect my coat, and when I came back down, she was standing by the taxi waiting. Lounging at the rear, her arm still under mine, we sat as a silent driver drove us to Hornnes, where she lived in a newly constructed house on the slope above the road to Naustdal and Floro.
Her young daughter, whose name was Tora, was sitting watching TV in the basement when we arrived. She said hello, somewhat shyly, and quickly withdrew to her bedroom.
‘What can I offer you?’ Grethe asked.
‘There was something you wanted to show me,’ I said.
‘A glass of red wine?’
‘I wouldn’t say no to that, either.’
She slanted her eyebrows upwards and smiled. Then she was gone. I sat watching TV, lost as to what this was all about. When Grethe returned with two glasses and an opened bottle of wine, she switched off the television and pulled out an LP and started the record player while I filled our glasses. Roger Whittaker resounded around the room with a voice that made me think of ships’ tarred planks and a fresh breeze in off the sea.
The ceiling was low. Bookshelves covered the wall around the TV screen. The pictures on the other walls all had landscape motifs: paintings, photos and graphics. I took a seat on the sofa, and she sat down beside me, in the crook of my arm. We tasted the red wine, and some time afterwards she turned to me, with a determined look in her eye, and whispered: ‘Kiss me.’ I saw no reason not to.
As I began to fumble with the zip on her dress, she laid a hand on mine and said: ‘No… Let’s go up to the bedroom.’ I didn’t object then, either.
Standing in the middle of the floor in the cold room, we slowly undressed each other, taking cautious nibbles at whatever appeared. Then we got into bed where we frolicked in a variety of positions until she was writhing deliriously above me, and we buckled into each other in one last sweet exhalation.
Sweaty and hot, she lay breathing against my chest. I felt laughter bubbling up inside me. ‘Was that what you wanted to show me?’
She raised her head and looked at me seriously. ‘No. Wait here…’
She got out of bed and crossed the floor, naked. Her body was soft and supple, with small breasts and a stomach left with stretch marks from pregnancy that would never go away completely. On her return, she was carrying a large leather-bound book, brownish-black in colour with golden letters on the cover. She switched on the light over the bed, snuggled up to me, pulled the duvet over us, carefully opened the book and slowly turned the first thin pages.
‘What is it? A family bible?’
She nodded with enthusiasm. ‘A very special one. I got it from my mother when I moved back here. She had been given it by her mother. But what makes it so special is that this bible has followed the women in our family through very different circumstances. My mother and her mother were married, but before them there was an unfortunate succession of one daughter after the other born out of wedlock and given the book.’
‘From illegitimate daughter to illegitimate daughter?’
‘For several generations, like a kind of original sin. But perhaps that’s not so strange when it comes down to it. A woman born out of wedlock was held in low public esteem. Anyone could lay their hands on her and thereby bring more illegitimate children into the world. The unfortunate thing for our family was that the first-born were always girls and thus inherited the rewards of sin.’
I stroked her hair. ‘But you’ve broken the line now…’
She turned her head, looked at me from the corner of her eyes. ‘Oh, we still have a sense of sin…’
Lying on her stomach, she pointed. ‘Look, here you have the whole of the line written down. The first, Martha, writes that she was born in 1799, and that she received the book when she was confirmed in 1816. She married a Hans Olavsson in 1819 and had a daughter, Maria, in 1823.’
‘No sons?’
‘Yes, but Maria hasn’t entered their names. You can see here… the writing changes. That’s Maria entering her name and her daughter’s, Kristine. Born in February 1840, out of wedlock. But she enters the father… look here,
