Here we see Sigrid as she comes out of the bathroom in the oversized pajama top with a slightly reinvigorated spirit. She could bake some buns, she thinks. Buns are soft and warm, and food always helps, in any situation. But she doesn’t know his kitchen, and the first thing she has to do is find out if he has yeast, and flour, and butter, and sugar, and milk. She tiptoes into the kitchen and starts to open cupboard after cupboard, as quietly as she can. She discovers a special technique for opening them quietly, and closing them almost all the way before letting them shut themselves properly, and when she takes down the bag of flour, she does it slowly so the paper doesn’t rustle. The doorbell rings, but there’s not a sound from the loft. She thinks it would be worse if whoever it was rang again than if she answered the door and revealed her presence, even though it might be Wanda—in which case she could get her skin care products from the bathroom, put them in a plastic bag, and give them to her, face expressionless—so she tiptoes out to the front door. It’s a man. Is Kåre not home? he asks, and puts something he was holding in his hand back in the inside pocket of his jacket. He’s asleep, Sigrid says. The man looks annoyed. They must have made some arrangement, Sigrid thinks. Okay, I can come back later. Can I give him a message? Sigrid asks. Who are you, by the way? the man asks. I’m Sigrid, Sigrid says. We’ve just, Sigrid starts, and the man laughs, I can see. No! Sigrid says, we’ve just started seeing each other, she says. Tell him that Ståle came by, and that I’ll come back around five, he says. Okay, Sigrid says with a smile, but Ståle has already turned around and is on his way down the stairs. Ståle, she writes on a scrap of paper, five o’clock. And then puts it on the kitchen table.
* * *
She wants to make buns, but realizes that it involves a lot of sounds that might wake Kåre; the flour bag will rustle, the bowls will clatter. She’ll have to wait awhile. She can read the newspaper. She moves the note and opens the paper, but the pages rustle so loudly; she tries to turn them as quietly as she can, and winds up reading a lot of stuff she’s not particularly interested in, because turning the pages quietly takes such effort that she tries to stick to one page. Then suddenly she hears Kåre coming down the stairs to the kitchen. He stands there and looks at her. You can make some noise even if I’m asleep, he says. I didn’t want to disturb you, she says. I hate the fact that you restrict yourself because of me, he says. Please stop doing that, Kåre says, and stares at her, and she sees something hard in his face that makes her feel even more insecure, she gets the same statue feeling that she had last night, it’s cold, alien. Just be yourself! he says. Yes, she says, and feels an iron band closing around her chest because she has been herself, she’s only been as quiet as she always is when someone is sleeping nearby, it presses tighter and tighter around her chest, and eventually she starts to cry, and the butterfly rubs away what was written on the silk banner, and writes a new message, which says: THUS I GO TO PIECES COMPLETELY! And then adds: I AM FALLING TO BITS, IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE HUMAN EAR TO HEAR (THE LOUDEST THING IT COULD SOUND LIKE WOULD BE THE SOUND OF SUGAR FALLING).