And what is Sigrid wearing, when she sits down on one of Kåre’s chairs? Answer: an oversized, checked flannel pajama top. Kåre was wearing the bottoms, and she the top, that was what he wanted, yesterday, that she should put it on, he’d bought the pajamas because she was coming, he laughed, pajamas and lilies, that’s what he’d bought, and he’d thought that was fantastic as he walked home with the two items, because Sigrid was coming. Pajamas and lilies. Him in the bottoms, her in the top. So she couldn’t exactly refuse, she couldn’t say that wearing an oversized man’s shirt was a cliché in her opinion, a typical expression of male aesthetics, male perception, a perception that specifically objectivized women, he would make her into a cliché by doing that—making her pad around being fragile and vulnerable in an oversized top and thus live up to all the myths—and, not least, by complying she would thereby undermine her own intellect and capacity for criticizing metaphors, wouldn’t she? She realized it was impossible to say all this. And then he sang the whole deLillos song “Cool in Pajamas” as they stood brushing their teeth in front of the mirror, and she couldn’t help but be impressed that he was like that, so natural. And it made her not a little happy, because she was changing something, she was now on her way to becoming someone else, someone who actually dressed herself in the aforementioned pajama top: it was the end of the line for her old, analytical mind, now she was just going to pad around in a pajama top and live. Have sex. Drink wine. No, whiskey actually. Or gin.
* * *
But then: smell some books and feel nauseous. She looks at the only small picture hanging on the walls, a murky painting of a boathouse in somber colors. Not exactly Van Gogh’s sunflowers, or a photocopy of Paul de Man from a textbook, but an original painting. Art should cost something, Kåre had said, if you’re going to have something on the walls, it should be expensive. Art should mean something, not be reproduced. Don’t just hang something up for the sake of having something on the walls, like Van Gogh’s sunflowers because they’re nice and yellow, sort of thing. Sigrid had blushed. Yes, but, Sigrid had said, it’s possible that Van Gogh’s sunflowers actually mean something to someone, even if they’re hanging in thousands of homes as cheap reproductions. I bet you it’s millions, Kåre said, so Sigrid said, I’ve got a reproduction of the sunflowers on my wall. She didn’t like him much right then, it didn’t fit with what she thought he was. Kåre looked at her and laughed. Well, he said, at least it’s not Monet’s water lilies! He ruffled her hair. Van Gogh’s sunflowers, eh? he said. Of course they may mean something to someone, Kåre said, it’s not that, for me it’s also about showing solidarity with artists. I would rather use my money to support a living artist than give it to an already lucrative high-turnover industry that spews out cheap and cheerful copies of cutesy art. Sigrid’s mouth was dry. Not everyone, she said, can afford to support living artists, and just because lots of people like something it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s fluffy. It is so fluffy, Kåre said, and looked at her, he thought this was amusing, finally she had to fight for something, you can’t deny it. In which case, I don’t care, Sigrid said, and felt her heart pounding in her throat. Hooray, Kåre said and laughed, and gave her a hug, but she was shaking all over and didn’t want him to feel it, he held her close and said that he was proud of her, she’d actually said what she thought.
* * *
A bit of heat, Kåre had once said on the phone, that’s what he needed. Dynamism, being alive. They’d certainly had that, he and Wanda! he said in a warm, shiny voice, and Sigrid thought it was more due to the whiskey than the love and a longing for the heat that he and Wanda had had. You could argue loudly, for all he cared, in fact, preferably shout at each other, as long as you stood up for what you believed in. Sigrid wasn’t very good at screaming and shouting and felt slightly uncomfortable when he said this. Of course, she had said, and looked away, before she’d had time to use the trick Jens Stoltenberg used when he was prime minister: to stare at precisely what you wanted to look away from when there was a danger you might look away. One should be oneself, one should be genuine and natural, and Sigrid was just that, he thought, even though she was a little more careful than he might like. But thus far, when he had intellectualized the two relationships, the one with Wanda versus the one with Sigrid (against his own better judgment, of course, as he would rather not intellectualize things at all), he’d come to the conclusion that with him and Wanda, the ruling principle was that of the individual, whereas with Sigrid, it was more the collective. He saw the collective in her, unity, something one didn’t need to imagine, one didn’t need to be like this or that, one could just be oneself and breathe freely, calmly, that’s what she had, Kåre had thought when he thought about her in those quiet hours by the window in the flat where Sigrid is now sitting with her head on the table, there was something very natural and uncomplicated about her, about her hair, which wasn’t dyed, like Wanda’s, Sigrid’s hair was somehow honest, he thought, and he had to smile, because that’s how it should be. Wanda’s hair: thin and black, Wanda’s eyes: ominously black-lined. Wanda’s mouth: red. All of Wanda: thin and dressed in leather. Wanda: the bassist. Wanda, over him with her strong, naked body and eyes hidden behind her thin black hair.
* * *
But, Sigrid had said on the phone, what if being careful is part of being natural? If shouting and screaming is not the way one does things? Her mouth had been a little dry. Then you have to change it, Kåre said. It’s like hiding yourself, not being true to yourself. But that’s what I’m like, Sigrid thought. Does that mean I’m not genuine? She felt a bit contemptuous of his argument, but could she express it? No.
* * *
But one can’t agree on everything, Sigrid thinks, where she’s sitting with her head on the black lacquer table, it’s not possible, she thinks, for two people to live together for their whole lives and to be the people they are. It’s only natural to feel a little contempt every now and then. Because, after all, that’s what they’re going to do, live a whole life together. They’ve talked a lot about it on the phone. Doors have opened since they met, doors they didn’t know existed, neither she, lonely and downcast as she is, nor he, distant and cold as he is—Kåre has even thought, in those quiet hours by the window, that Sigrid is the light, salvation, a bit like Jesus for him. He’s also imagined (but he hasn’t said a word about this) Sigrid sitting, soft and slender, with a small, sleeping baby in her arms. Her hair is falling softly along her jaw, and she has a very maternal expression on her face as she looks down, smiling, at the tiny baby face. Children? Is that what’s going to happen now? Kåre has thought, because he never had this fantasy about Wanda, or anyone else, so it must mean something. So: doors have opened for them, and they’re about to go through these doors that have opened, and stay there, Sigrid thinks. She sees a crystal whiskey decanter standing on an old corner cupboard, it must be the one he poured his drinks from while he was talking to her in the evenings this past month, when his voice took on a warmer, shinier tone the more he’s drunk, and she didn’t like it, she really didn’t like it, but she’s told herself she has to stop being so childish, people drink, get over it, she’s told herself, and insisted that it’s part of normal life, the normal life she’s now going to become part of too.
* * *
So there was that, a little contempt, but there was also a little of something that felt like love, like yesterday, when he played PJ Harvey for her, from the new record, as he said, as though he was performing a sacred rite or something (and it was, for Kåre, who hadn’t really listened to PJ Harvey’s new record, he somehow got stuck on Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, where she sings the line about touching someone’s head, but now, he felt, it was time, with Sigrid and the new era he was entering, to listen to PJ Harvey’s new record, White Chalk), and Sigrid watched Kåre’s face as Harvey sang the beautiful, but slightly ominous, words “Dear darkness, won’t you cover, cover me again?” PJ Harvey sang in such a reedy voice over the very delicate and beautiful piano accompaniment, with a few heavy beats on the deeper notes, a kind of soft, rolling waltz, and it was as though Kåre’s face fused with the music and lyrics, imagine listening like that, Sigrid thought, and felt a sudden love for this listening face, she wanted to be close to it, say that she loved it, touch it, or best of all, be the voice and the piano, and the lyrics, and fill the whole room like a soft, rolling waltz—obviously not knowing that if she had been this, in her romantic, cosmic fantasy (the voice and the piano and the lyrics, this song), she would have been something that told Kåre something that he, as we already know, had tried to hide: “Dear darkness, won’t you cover, cover me again?” and that would have had the opposite effect on Kåre from what she imagined, she would then, personally, have had exactly the same effect on Kåre as the song did yesterday, when he stood listening to it, with Sigrid standing beside him: he’d had the slightly alarming feeling that Sigrid, potentially the mother of his future children, was like a piece of furniture or a cushion or something else one’s bought in the belief that it would be perfect for the flat, that this piece of furniture would so perfectly reflect something in oneself in terms of aesthetics and identity, but then somehow sticks out when it’s in place, and one doesn’t quite know what to do with it. Where to put it. And it was expensive. Dear darkness. Come, won’t you cover, cover me again? echoed a voice in the depths of Kåre.
* * *
Sigrid feels a little cold. She’s taken the fact that she’s not dressed yet as a sign that her new, adult, and carefree existence has started, but now this existence means that her feet are cold. She looks over at the sofa, there’s a blanket lying there. She’ll go over and sit on the sofa and wrap the blanket around her, as if she were at home. The blanket prickles against her legs, but it’ll soon warm up, she thinks, now she’s going to sit on this sofa and try to recapture the feeling she had last night when she couldn’t sleep, lying naked under the duvet and looking around the room and listening to Kåre breathing: there were no curtains over the windows, so she could look right up to the stars, and the room was night-black and cold and unfamiliar, and she felt unfamiliar, the unfamiliar feeling of the duvet, the pillow, the mattress, the man, the breathing, the room, until suddenly she noticed, looking out the window, up at the sky, that the Big Dipper was out there twinkling. There was a pressure in her chest; it was a little ridiculous, unfortunately, how seriously she took signs like that: Was it real, she wondered, or, to be more precise, experienced, since she didn’t actually formulate this overwhelming feeling to herself using the words “is it real,” no, that’s just our own inadequate and almost self-consciously unsuccessful—but thus ironically successful—attempt to convey what she felt, that it was the Big Dipper of all things that was twinkling at her from the sky and seemed to know that she was lying there small and alone in a stranger’s bed, and came to her now, when everything was utterly unfamiliar, as a sign, a sign that she was, in fact, at home? It made her think about the girl they’d managed to find in the forest because she’d used the light on her mobile phone, she’d gotten lost, and she didn’t have enough credit left to call anyone, but she still had a little battery power, enough to light up the display screen on her phone, and because she was calm, she managed to wait until late at night when a helicopter finally circled near to where she was lying and she blinked at it with her phone. Imagine, Sigrid thought. Wait, blink, survive. And then she looked up at the stars. And that’s what you’ve done too, she thought all at once, a sudden revelation as to the inner being of stars, and this sudden insight and symbolism made her feel warm all over, you have waited, blinked, survived! How long does a star live? she thought, they don’t live forever, but they’ve certainly twinkled for as long as she’s been alive! And, thought Sigrid—and looked over at Kåre’s neck, seeing how the night sort of held him in its embrace, like a thin son, Sigrid thought, and thought that she should make a note of all this on her mobile phone, only the phone was down in the kitchen, and she watched his shoulder rise and fall with his breathing—and she thought, that’s what I’ve done too, I’ve shone and shone and finally someone has seen me twinkling, and now I’m going to survive. And now she was completely overwhelmed, and the tears ran from her eyes, and down her nose and throat under the duvet. When she’d finished crying, she lay there and looked at Kåre. Here he was, in real life, the man from the author’s photograph. He had such defined features, he almost looked a bit frightening in his sleep, his skin was so smooth in the dark, he was almost like a statue. What if she were to snuggle up against him, surely she could do that, and maybe she would fall asleep then. She edged her way closer and when she moved her head to look at him one last time before she lay down to sleep, her hair stroked his chin, and Kåre started and sat up with a noise that sounded like an animal living a wild life in the forest, which had now been caught; Kåre looked at her with wild eyes and he gasped for breath, what, he said, eh, he said, and rubbed his face, oh God, he said, it’s you, it’s you, and then he fell back again and straight to sleep. Sigrid didn’t know how to interpret that, and hadn’t dared ask him this morning, and when she thinks about it now, on the sofa, she almost laughs, she must ask him about it when he wakes up.
* * *
She wishes she could automatically feel a bit more at home here. She tries to lean back against the sofa, because she realizes she hasn’t relaxed at all, her shoulders are tense, she tries to relax her shoulders against the back of the sofa, but doesn’t quite manage. It’s so quiet. Only the hum of the fridge from the kitchen, not a sound from upstairs.
* * *
Her phone rings. Oh no, Kåre will wake up! She jumps up and runs to her jacket that’s hanging out in the hall, it’s Magnus, she hasn’t spoken to him for a month, not since she called and said that she just couldn’t write the article about the women in those oversized men’s shirts, hello, she whispers into the phone; hello? Magnus says, and she feels the urge to shush him, he’s talking so loudly, but she just whispers hello back and hurries into the bathroom and shuts the door as quietly as she can. What’s wrong? Magnus says. I have to be quiet, Sigrid says. Someone’s sleeping, she says. Aha, Magnus says in a teasing voice. Yes, yes, Sigrid says. I wondered how you were getting on, but I guess you’re fine then, Magnus says, I won’t keep you. No, no, it’s fine, Sigrid says, but maybe we should speak another time, when I don’t need to be so quiet. Yes, of course, Magnus says, but then suddenly she doesn’t want him to go, she felt safe hearing his voice, she can’t get her words out, she closes her eyes and lips so she doesn’t release the sobs that are suddenly forcing their way up her throat. Sigrid? Magnus says, are you there? Did you hang up? But she can’t make a sound, because if she makes the slightest sound now, it will be the sound of crying, so she says nothing, hello, Magnus says, hello, hello, Sigrid, I’m going to put the phone down, maybe the line’s gone down, if you can hear me, I’ll give you a ring in a couple of days. Bye, he says, and then he hangs up. Sigrid sits down on the toilet seat with her hand in front of her mouth.