I think I’ll go out for a jaunt. Want to come?”
With a look of horror, he turned down her offer point-blank. Another motorcycle trip was still fresh in his memory: a freezing, dangerous journey through Vestfold in the late autumn six months previously, with Hanne Wilhelmsen in the driver’s seat and himself as a blinded, soaking-wet pillion passenger. On that occasion, the excursion had been a matter of life or death. His first motorbike ride—and most decidedly his last.
“No thanks, I’d rather go and jump in the lake,” he said. It was half past four. They could actually go home.
“Strictly speaking, you should make a start on going through the tip-offs,” he added meekly.
“I’ll do that tomorrow, Håkon. Tomorrow.”
* * *
He was consumed by despair. It was sitting like a nasty gray rat gnawing inside him, somewhere behind his breastbone. Since Sunday morning, he’d drunk two bottles of orange-flavored antacid to no avail. The rat obviously liked the taste and continued gnawing with renewed vigor. No matter what he did, no matter what he said, nothing was of any help. His daughter did not want to talk to him. True enough, she wanted to be there, in her own childhood home, sleeping in her childhood bedroom. He found a tiny scrap of comfort in that, the fact that she probably was at least finding some kind of security through keeping him close. But then she wouldn’t talk.
He had collected Kristine from the emergency psychiatric clinic. When he saw her sitting there, exhausted, with dark eyes and sunken shoulders, she reminded him of his wife twenty years earlier. At that time, the young woman had sat like that, with the same vacant stare, the same hopeless demeanor and expressionless mouth. She had just heard she would die, leaving behind her husband and daughter, barely four years old. Then, he’d become furious. He had cursed and yelled and taken his wife to see every single expert in the entire country. Eventually, he’d borrowed a considerable sum of money from his parents in a futile hope that distant experts in the United States, the promised land for all medical practitioners, would be able to alter the cruel diagnosis so mournfully reached by fourteen Norwegian doctors. The journey didn’t result in anything other than the young woman dying far from home, and he spent the return trip with his beloved in a refrigerated compartment in the aircraft hold.
Single parenthood with little Kristine had been difficult. He had been newly qualified as a dentist, at a time when the previously lucrative profession had become less profitable after twenty years of social democratic public dental services. But they had managed. The middle of the seventies had seen the struggle for women’s liberation, something, paradoxically enough, that had been of assistance to him. A single father insisting on looking after his daughter was favored by all kinds of special arrangements from the public authorities, great sympathy from everyone he came into contact with, as well as help and support from female colleagues and neighbors. They had managed.
There hadn’t been many women. An occasional relationship, certainly, but never of particularly lengthy duration. Kristine had seen to that. On the three occasions he had ventured to introduce the topic of remarriage, she had sulked, rejecting every effort to curry favor. And she always won. He loved his daughter. Naturally, he understood that all men love their children, and from a purely rational viewpoint saw he wasn’t especially different from the rest of the Norwegian male population. Emotionally, nevertheless, he insisted to himself and his circle of acquaintances that the relationship between himself and his daughter was a special one. They had only each other. He had been both father and mother to her. He had tended her in sickness, made sure she had freshly laundered clothes, and consoled the teenager when her first romance collapsed after three
With a look of horror, he turned down her offer point-blank. Another motorcycle trip was still fresh in his memory: a freezing, dangerous journey through Vestfold in the late autumn six months previously, with Hanne Wilhelmsen in the driver’s seat and himself as a blinded, soaking-wet pillion passenger. On that occasion, the excursion had been a matter of life or death. His first motorbike ride—and most decidedly his last.
“No thanks, I’d rather go and jump in the lake,” he said. It was half past four. They could actually go home.
“Strictly speaking, you should make a start on going through the tip-offs,” he added meekly.
“I’ll do that tomorrow, Håkon. Tomorrow.”
* * *
He was consumed by despair. It was sitting like a nasty gray rat gnawing inside him, somewhere behind his breastbone. Since Sunday morning, he’d drunk two bottles of orange-flavored antacid to no avail. The rat obviously liked the taste and continued gnawing with renewed vigor. No matter what he did, no matter what he said, nothing was of any help. His daughter did not want to talk to him. True enough, she wanted to be there, in her own childhood home, sleeping in her childhood bedroom. He found a tiny scrap of comfort in that, the fact that she probably was at least finding some kind of security through keeping him close. But then she wouldn’t talk.
He had collected Kristine from the emergency psychiatric clinic. When he saw her sitting there, exhausted, with dark eyes and sunken shoulders, she reminded him of his wife twenty years earlier. At that time, the young woman had sat like that, with the same vacant stare, the same hopeless demeanor and expressionless mouth. She had just heard she would die, leaving behind her husband and daughter, barely four years old. Then, he’d become furious. He had cursed and yelled and taken his wife to see every single expert in the entire country. Eventually, he’d borrowed a considerable sum of money from his parents in a futile hope that distant experts in the United States, the promised land for all medical practitioners, would be able to alter the cruel diagnosis so mournfully reached by fourteen Norwegian doctors. The journey didn’t result in anything other than the young woman dying far from home, and he spent the return trip with his beloved in a refrigerated compartment in the aircraft hold.
Single parenthood with little Kristine had been difficult. He had been newly qualified as a dentist, at a time when the previously lucrative profession had become less profitable after twenty years of social democratic public dental services. But they had managed. The middle of the seventies had seen the struggle for women’s liberation, something, paradoxically enough, that had been of assistance to him. A single father insisting on looking after his daughter was favored by all kinds of special arrangements from the public authorities, great sympathy from everyone he came into contact with, as well as help and support from female colleagues and neighbors. They had managed.
There hadn’t been many women. An occasional relationship, certainly, but never of particularly lengthy duration. Kristine had seen to that. On the three occasions he had ventured to introduce the topic of remarriage, she had sulked, rejecting every effort to curry favor. And she always won. He loved his daughter. Naturally, he understood that all men love their children, and from a purely rational viewpoint saw he wasn’t especially different from the rest of the Norwegian male population. Emotionally, nevertheless, he insisted to himself and his circle of acquaintances that the relationship between himself and his daughter was a special one. They had only each other. He had been both father and mother to her. He had tended her in sickness, made sure she had freshly laundered clothes, and consoled the teenager when her first romance collapsed after three