late.
But I was hardly halfway down the stairs when he started to speak again, and now in a voice that was barely recognisable.
“My wife is very ill” he said, as if he was talking to himself, but hoping that I’d overhear.
I remained standing with one foot poised over a step, unable to decide which reaction would be most natural. But soon I’d hesitated for so long that there was no going back. I turned and said: “Excuse me?” as if I hadn’t heard what he’d said.
He stood looking at me gratefully, as far as I could make out over the edge of the desk.
“My wife is very ill,” he repeated, looking down as if he was ashamed of it.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked politely.
“A rare form of cancer” he replied, my question seemed to have made it easier for him because he was looking down at me again. “One there’s no treatment for. They’ve tried everything, but nothing works.”
“Can’t they operate?” I asked, and thought that I could make out the beginning of an endless series of questions I could ask if necessary, in order to keep the conversation going.
He shook his head.
“No one will say anything,” he said, his voice sounding like it might crack. “No one will tell me anything. I ask and ask, every single day I’m there, but they just answer in general terms that it’s impossible to know for sure, that it could be months, that it could be years. And the worst part of it is that I’m certain that they do know. That every one of them dealing with her there, that they know exactly how long she’s got left. They’ve just agreed between themselves that me and Kristine are better off not knowing.”
It gave me a start when he mentioned her name, I couldn’t quite make myself believe that he had a woman by his side, this hairless flycatcher who paid me my wages every fortnight without fail.
“What do you think?” he continued. “What would you have done if you were me? Would you take them at their word when they say that they don’t know? Or would you have pushed them until you squeezed the truth out of them?”
And when I didn’t answer: “Which is better, do you think? To know the details, to know to the hour how long you have left, or not to know anything, as it would be otherwise, if there was no illness?”
I didn’t know what to answer, and I wasn’t really sure if he really wanted advice or if it was more important for him to present his problem to an outsider, someone he wasn’t well acquainted with. I said it was something that it was difficult to have an opinion about before you found yourself in the same situation.
Didriksen nodded ponderously, as if he hadn’t expected me to offer any particular opinion either. Then he looked at the clock.
“Well. They’re probably waiting for you down there. But thank you. Thank you.”
Slightly perplexed I went back to work, uncertain as to whether I’d now bolstered my position with the boss or emphatically destroyed what little standing I had managed to build up over the course of the last few years’ unblemished record at such a small and easily surveyed workplace. The others glanced at me in passing, and these seemed more expressions of suspicion than any actual curiosity regarding my reasons for having a chat with the boss in his office and not even during break time. Kare and Jens-Olav had managed to repair the damage while I’d been gone … the noise was back to full level … a polyphonic hum, a persistent booming drone as stolid as the surrounding walls, as solid and as durable as them in their delimitation of the room. Everyone had gotten back to what they were doing, an even ratio of men to machines, spread out over the large floor with approximately the same distance between them, like sculptures in a museum, and I thought, while I stood there … because that’s one of the advantages of this type of work, that you don’t need to think about it while you’re doing it … that if it hadn’t been for the racket we were making, if, on the contrary, all nine of us worked away in silence, busy with our own projects, then possibly the only sound we would have heard would have been the hollow blows against the wall from Mr Didriksen’s office. I suppose that’s the lot of insignificant people in life, they occupy themselves with insignificant things. That some of them still end up in important positions, in a roundabout way, is just the way it goes.
I glanced up at the large clock above the embrasure. Just a little after this time tomorrow Hans-Jacob and Elise would be paying their monthly visit. I don’t know why I did it exactly … maybe in order to steel myself for what was coming … but I let the evening play out in my head just as I knew it would unfold … exactly as it would unfold … getting changed around six o’ clock … Helene’s imperious meal preparations … Her appeals for assistance, always with a hint of resentment, if there’s something to be peeled or washed or chopped … The strange feeling I get walking around with shoes on indoors, as if I’m a stranger in my own home … The sound of the doorbell frightening me out of my wits because I’ve been walking around for the last hour waiting for it to ring … the slightly strained tone at the start, which we can never completely dispense with, no matter how well we all know each other … The conversation around the table that for a little while is intended to involve all four participants, but which soon divides into two, one between the men and one between the ladies …
Hans-Jacob always talks more than I do. He’s the one who talks and I’m the one who responds. He’s the one who brings things up and I’m the one who chimes in. And sooner or later, come Saturday, Hans-Jacob will turn the conversation around to his favourite subject, about a six-month course we both took a few years after leaving school … at a time when we both had a lot of common interests and took for granted that we were going to work together … and more specifically about a teacher we had in the course, who had indeed been exceptionally talented. Moreover, he’d penned several books within his particular field, which were the ones we’d used when studying for the final exam, and which were also out of the ordinary … so perhaps it’s not so strange that Hans-Jacob is always bringing the subject up, even though, like me, he probably hasn’t looked at the books since and so is relying on the memory of his past enthusiasm. “That Vogt-Johannessen,” he’ll say, and draw circles in the air with the end of his pipe, just as if we were sitting in a cafe way back in the day, each with his beer, after our class was over. And once more he’ll talk about Vogt-Johannessen as if I didn’t know who he was, had never read him, and had no grasp at all of the technical content of his work. But that’s Hans-Jacob’s way of talking … as if the person listening doesn’t have the faintest idea what he’s talking about. “That Vogt-Johannessen, Andreas … Vogt-Johannessen …” He could continue like that the entire evening. In which case his voice will gradually acquire more of a singsong tone as he warms up to the subject. He’ll gesticulate wildly and caress his pipe as if it was a rare geological find … eventually it’ll sound like he’s actually singing from his seat … casting resonant musical waves that kind of wash or throw his conversational points over the listener and make it impossible for me to question anything at all. He never seems to go anywhere … not even to the traditional Saturday dinner at our house, pleasant and relaxed as it’s intended to be … without having thought out a list of topics beforehand that he can bring up and which he knows will arouse interest. On no occasion does he turn up unprepared. The worst thing about it is that he’s usually studied the subjects so well that it’s impossible to contradict him: all the facts are on his side.
I’ve never liked talking to him. And that’s in spite of the fact that our conversations through the years probably amount to several thousand hours altogether. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because he’s always so quick to respond, his answers so pertinent to what I ask him, even when he can’t
