with me in February.’
‘So how many of you will that make?’ asked Adam with a frown, as if the thought of a bunch of researchers using taxpayers’ money to immerse themselves in hatred made him deeply sceptical.
‘Four. Probably. It’ll be cool. I’ve always worked alone, more or less. And this…’
She picked up a piece of paper in one hand and waved the other hand at the rest of the papers surrounding her.
‘This is all legal hatred. Verbal hatred that is protected by the concept of freedom of speech. Since malicious comments against minorities correspond to a significant extent with what is clearly hate crime, I think it’s interesting to see how it all hangs together. Where the boundaries are.’
‘What boundaries?’
‘The boundaries for what is covered by freedom of speech.’
‘But isn’t that almost everything?’
‘Unfortunately, yes.’
‘Unfortunately? Surely we should thank God for the fact that we can say more or less anything we like in this country!’
‘Of course. But listen…’
She tucked her feet underneath her. He looked at her. When he got home he had just wanted to fall into bed, even though it wasn’t even ten o’clock. He was still tired after a day that had been much too long and not particularly productive, but he no longer had any desire to sleep. Over the years he and Johanne had fallen into a pattern where most of their life together revolved around his work, her concerns and the children. When he saw her like this, sitting amidst a sea of paper without even mentioning the children, he remembered in a flash what it had been like to be intensely in love with her.
‘Freedom of speech goes a long way,’ she said, searching for an article among the chaos. ‘As it should. But as you know, it has some limitations. The most interesting comes under paragraph 135a in the penal code. I don’t want to bore you with too much legal stuff, but I just want to-’
‘You never bore me. Never.’
‘I’m sure I do.’
‘Not at the moment, anyway.’
A fleeting smile, and she went on. ‘A few people have been convicted for overstepping the law. Very few. The issue – or perhaps I should say the question of priorities – relates to freedom of speech. And judging by everything I have here…’
She waved her hands wearily before she found the book she was looking for.
‘… then freedom of speech rules. End of story.’
‘Well, isn’t that obvious?’ said Adam. ‘Fortunately. We’re a modern society, after all.’
‘I don’t know about modern. I’ve ploughed through everything these homophobic idiots have said recently-’
‘I’m not sure your conclusions are entirely scientific.’
She allowed herself to be interrupted. Sighed and put her hands behind her neck.
‘I’m not feeling particularly scientific at the moment. I’m tired. Worn out. In order for something to be classified as hate crime, it isn’t enough for the perpetrator to hate the victim as an individual. The hatred must be directed at the victim as the representative of a group. And if there’s one thing I have difficulty in grasping, it’s the idea of hatred against groups in a society like Norway. In Gaza, yes. In Kabul, yes. But here? In safe, social democratic Norway?’
She took a mouthful of tea and held it there for a few seconds before swallowing.
‘First of all I spent two months going through public pronouncements about Muslims, blacks and other ethnic and cultural minorities. What I found was generalization of the worst kind. It’s “they” and “we” right down the line.’
She drew quotation marks in the air with her fingers.
‘In the end I felt sick. I felt sick, Adam! I don’t know how an ordinary Norwegian Muslim mother or father can sleep at night. How they feel each night when they put their children to bed and settle them down and read to them, knowing how much crap people are saying and writing and thinking and feeling about them…’
Her eyes narrowed and she took off her glasses.
‘It’s as if everything is allowed these days, somehow. And of course most things should be. Political freedom of speech in Norway is getting close to the absolute. But this culture of expressing opinions…’
She breathed on the lenses and rubbed them with her shirt sleeve.
‘Sorry,’ she said, with a strained smile. ‘It’s just that I’d be so scared if I belonged to a distrusted minority and had children.’
Adam laughed. ‘I’m sure you could teach them a lot in that particular respect,’ he said. ‘On the subject of worrying about children, I mean. But…’
He stood up and pushed his tea cup to the other side of the table. He quickly swept aside the papers closest to Johanne on the sofa, and sat down beside her. Put his arm around her. Kissed her hair, which smelled of pancakes.
‘But what’s this got to do with hate crime?’ he asked. ‘I mean, we’re agreed that this isn’t a criminal issue, but is protected by the law governing freedom of speech.’
‘It’s…’
She searched for the right words.
‘Since the substance in what is said,’ she began again, before breaking off once more. ‘Since the content of what is written and said corresponds exactly with… with what the others claim, those who attack, those who kill… then in my opinion…’
She lifted the glass without drinking.
‘If we’re going to succeed in saying anything meaningful about hate crimes, then we have to know what triggers them. And I don’t mean just the traditional explanations about the conditions in which a person grew up, experiences of loss, a history of conflict, the allocation of resources, religious opposition and so on. We have to know what…
‘You mean whether the former facilitates the latter?’
‘Among other things.’
‘But isn’t that obvious? Even though we can’t ban such statements because of it?’
‘We can’t actually make that assumption. The connection, I mean. It has to be investigated.’
‘Daddy!
Adam shot up. Johanne closed her eyes and prayed for all she was worth that Kristiane wouldn’t wake up. All she could hear was Adam’s calm, quiet voice interspersed with Ragnhild’s sleepy fretfulness. Then everything went quiet again. The neighbours down below must have already gone to bed. Earlier that evening the noise of some film that was clearly action-packed had got on her nerves; it had sounded as if she were actually in the line of fire.
‘She’s fine,’ Adam said, flopping down on the sofa beside her. ‘Probably just a dream. She wasn’t really awake. Now, where were we?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said wearily. ‘I don’t actually know.’
‘I thought you were pleased about this project.’
She laid her hand on his stomach and crept into his embrace.
‘I am,’ she murmured. ‘But I’ve had an overdose of hatred at the moment. I haven’t even asked you how your day went.’
‘Please don’t.’
She could feel him slowly beginning to relax under her weight. His breathing became deeper, and she fell into the same rhythm. She could tell his belt was too tight from the roll of flesh bulging over the waistband of his trousers.
‘What do you think about some curtains, Adam?’
‘Hm?’
