When I came back from Skjetten for the second time that Sunday and swung up from Bentsebrua bridge towards Advokat Dehlis plass and parked by the bus stop, I felt a little shaken. The day hadn’t turned out the way I had expected. I didn’t know what I had expected. But something other than this.
It was afternoon. It would soon be evening. As I was about to let myself into my flat from the landing, I heard the click from the neighbours’ door and the door opening and Mrs Jondal on her way out and the click of the lock as she closed it. With my face half turned towards my own door I only caught a glimpse of her face, her body, and she was all dressed up, and she looked good, even from that angle. I didn’t really want to say hello, I felt depleted, confused, but out of politeness I turned around anyway and said, hello, Mrs Jondal, you’re looking really nice. And so she was. Mrs Jondal, she said. After all this time, Arvid, you still call me Mrs Jondal and not Mary. Her name was Mary, pronounced the English way, Mary, Mary Jondal, and I said, I guess I’m a little old-fashioned that way, and when you’re looking the way you look now, it’s probably safer if I use your last name. Don’t be silly, Mrs Jondal said, but she blushed a little and smiled, and on her way towards the stairs going down she said, and you, Arvid, are you doing all right, and I said, no, I can’t say I am, and then she stopped abruptly. Oh, she said, is there anything seriously wrong. Strictly speaking there was, but nothing I could talk to her about, nothing I wanted to talk about. She turned towards me, we were standing chest to chest, and she really did look great, why does she have to go now, I thought, dressed like that, and leave me behind. I suddenly felt bitter. I held my left hand flat against the half-open door, the key was in the lock, but I didn’t go in, and as long as I remained, half turned towards her the way I was, it wasn’t easy for her to leave either. I guess I’m just feeling a little low today, I said, it’s nothing to worry about, actually I’m fine. It doesn’t seem like it, Mrs Jondal said. Doesn’t it, I said, no, she said, you look very sad. So what do we do, then, I said and thought, we, did I really say we, why did I say we. She bit her lip, I was supposed to be meeting some girlfriends, she said, we get together one Sunday a month at Regnbuen, that’s why I’m a little dressed up. You look really great, I said. Do you think so, Mrs Jondal said, and I said, absolutely, haven’t you looked at yourself in the mirror. Well yes, I have, she said, thank you, and then she said, maybe I could call and cancel, she bit her lip again and said, or I could have it postponed. I’m the only one who turns up every time anyway, one of the others always calls and has to pull out at the last moment, so why can’t I do the same, she said, I can call. No, no, you don’t have to do that, I’m perfectly fine, I said, I’ll manage, honestly, Mrs Jondal, I didn’t mean it that way, but no, I’m going to make that call now, she said, I think it will be for the best, and she turned and unlocked her door and left it open and walked straight into the hallway where the phone stood on a low chest of drawers below the mirror, as phones still did back then, and she lifted the receiver and dialled a number, and I heard her say that she couldn’t come to Regnbuen that evening because she wasn’t feeling very well, if you know what I mean, Mrs Jondal said, and apparently the girlfriend at the other end did, for there was no protest as far as I could make out, and while they talked, my key was still in the lock, my hand flat against the door, and I hadn’t moved a centimetre for several minutes. I thought, Jesus, that was fast, it was just a whim, what do I do now. Is it like with the cake last year. Is it just a cake.
I stayed where I was and she hung up in there and came back to the doorway and said, Jondal went to Hamar this morning, to see his father again, he seems to be ill, my father-in-law that is, it’s something to do with his stomach, he’s in hospital apparently, he’s coming home on Thursday, Jondal I mean, my husband, she said, but I knew that already, and then she blushed and opened the door all the way and took one step to the side as if to invite me in, and I said, yes, but that won’t do, I can’t come into your flat, it’s his home after all, you see, even though he’s in Hamar, you have to come into mine, I said, everything in here belongs to me, no one else has any say in my home except me. All right, then, she said, I will, and she said it resolutely. She shut her door, pulled it firmly to until there was a sharp click from the lock and pulled out the key and dropped it into her coat pocket, and I held my door wide open for her, and she walked the few metres across the landing without hesitation, and the sound of her high heels clacked up into the floor above us, sending echoes back down, and she walked quickly past me, ahead of me, and then I too went in and dropped my father’s satchel on the floor with John Berger’s political Casanova under the flap and shut the door, there was no way I could talk myself out of this.
I helped her out of her coat, and I did it gallantly, almost formally and perhaps a little hectically, for suddenly we were behaving in a way they only did in movies from the forties and fifties. I wasn’t wearing a suit, but I might as well have been, and it could have been powder blue, as they often were back then, even when the films were in black and white, with something red on the tie, merely a detail or two, and we were a couple and had just got home from the premiere of a merely passable play at the National Theatre, we had talked about it in the taxi on the way up, Norwegian contemporary drama was in a poor state, we both agreed, and actually it was a bit strange, after all quite a few years had passed since the war, you’d have thought it would be on its way up, full of new energy and to hell with everything that had set the world on fire, that it would be angry, but that was not the case, not Norwegian drama, it was more or less pathetic, the war didn’t exist, everything was feather-light and entertaining, and my thoughts kept wandering like this as they often did and still do and could have done for a long time yet, but in fact I knew nothing about contemporary drama, it could have been anything, and besides this Sunday was more than forty years after the war, and I had been to the theatre only a few times in my whole life. The problem was the cloakrooms, was I supposed to tip or not, and if I was, how much. Everyone else knew. I wouldn’t know how to handle myself, I wouldn’t find my seat, I would get so nervous that they realised I was from Veitvet and therefore made mistakes, and then they would laugh at me the way they laughed at me when I said cacao instead of cocoa, and laugh at me the way they laughed at Charlie Chaplin at his clumsiest, but I didn’t want to be like Chaplin, so instead I simply refrained from going to the theatre.
I took out a hanger for her coat and quickly found a place for it in the row below the hat rack and took off my own jacket and hung it on the peg over the paraffin cans that still stood empty by the wall. It’s a little cold in here, I said, and she said, I don’t mind.
She walked into the living room in her high heels, and now it was definitely Mrs Jondal and not some black-and-white woman from 1949. And I looked at her back, and her skin at the nape of her neck beneath her pinned-up hair and the pretty dress and the zipper running all the way down, and she turned around and looked at me, and I said, are you really sure you want this, and then I thought, maybe she doesn’t understand what I mean, maybe she’ll say, what are you talking about Arvid, want what, but she said, yes, or else I would be on the bus on my way to Regnbuen, and then I said, would you like me to pull down that zipper. Yes, would you, she said, and didn’t smile and turned her back to me again, and I pulled the zipper down, and she stepped out of the dress, and I thought, right now it’s better not to look her in the face, and in the bedroom I was glad I had changed the bedclothes and made my bed up so impeccably that morning, and she was much more active than I had expected, she was eager and surprisingly sure of her herself, and at first that made things a little complicated, we practically collided at both ends, but then it was just a big relief, and once she said, Jesus, Arvid, which I suppose was a reasonable thing to say at that moment but then she was quiet, and I closed my eyes and took my chances.
And the phone rang. I was almost asleep, I thought, I don’t want to, I don’t want to open my eyes. But I had to. Next to me lay Mrs Jondal, also known as Mary, on her stomach with her forehead into the pillow and my only duvet barely covering her bottom and she didn’t smile, though she might well have, there was every reason to, I could have smiled myself. It surprised me that it had gone so well, it should have been more complicated, it always was. Go ahead and take it, she said into the pillow. I don’t mind. As long as it isn’t Turid. And she smiled as she said it. But I was pretty sure it was Turid, who else could it be, it was something about the phone, it was ringing in the same way it had this morning, as if an extra shrill tone had been added. The dialling tone was A, you could tune your guitar to the dialling tone, but this ringing didn’t have a key, you couldn’t place it on a scale, I’m not going to answer it, I said, it is Turid. How do you know, Mary said. I can hear it, I said, I can always hear who is calling. If you had been calling, I would have known it was you. If I had forgotten to pay my rent, I would have known it was the landlord calling and not my mother. Your mother is dead, Mary said, so that would be easy. That’s true, I said. Vigdis, then. That I would have heard. That’s an odd skill, she said, that you can hear who’s calling. I was born that way, I said, and she said, but in the nineteenth century that skill would have been wasted, you could have been born then, with the same skill, that you could hear who was calling, except there were no telephones. That wouldn’t have been any fun, would it. It wouldn’t, I said, and it felt so good lying there, and my body had a weight, a calm it hardly ever had, and Mary said, if we hadn’t just had such a nice time together, we wouldn’t be lying here talking rubbish. I know, I said.
It was she who stood up first. She was naked and pretty and not shy at all, she hadn’t blushed a single time in here the way she blushed on the landing. I stayed in bed while she got dressed. She studied me all the way up and then down again and said, I’ve always wondered what it would be like with you. Have you, I said, last year too. How do you mean, last year, she said. That chocolate cake, was it more than just a cake. She laughed, oh, that. That was actually just a cake. Was it, I said, I was hoping for something more. I felt a little cold without Mary Jondal in my bed, I wanted to pull the duvet over me, but I couldn’t while she was watching. Did you, she said and laughed again, but anyway, now I know, she said, now I know what it would be like with you. You’re a fine boy, Arvid Jansen. She had all her clothes on. Now the shoes. Boy, I thought. I am thirty-eight years old, she must be younger than that, I didn’t know how old she was. She bent down and kissed my shoulder, and I thought, she doesn’t really think I’m all grown up, that’s it, and then she said, I suppose it will have to be just this one time, otherwise we’ll end up waiting for each other and getting upset, and I said yes, I think we’ll stop here, and a weight was lifted off my shoulders, but she was the one doing the lifting, I didn’t lift it myself, and I thought, I never get ahead, why am I never ahead, is it a weakness in me, it has to be.
Now she was fully dressed and said, I just might make it to that dinner at Regnbuen after all, at least the dessert, we usually have a drink first, and that often takes quite a while, the way we talk, so maybe I’ll make it if I take a taxi. Goodbye then Arvid, I hope you’re feeling less troubled. She smiled and went into the hallway and took her coat from the hanger and walked quickly out onto the landing and pulled my front door shut with a loud click, and I could hear the swift clatter of her heels on the way to the ground floor and all the way out onto the cobbles in the backyard. And boy or not, in fact I did. Feel less troubled.