1 ] This footnote, the very first, suffers from having a displaced time perspective. It originates from a specific event that has to do with Armand’s youth; however, it does not deal with Armand’s youth but with his son’s youth, as viewed by Armand, a man in his sixties. This footnote is a commentary on something that took place in a completely different time, and at a completely different place, and with characters who are altogether different, such as Armand, or those who aren’t even included here in this text at this time (such as Armand’s son, who wasn’t born yet); this was a time almost twenty years before Armand would meet the woman who’d later become his son’s mother, and yet the son is a central figure in this footnote, in this scene that illuminates his father’s youth.

1 B ] One morning not so long ago Armand awoke and decided that he had to visit his son, whom he had not seen in well over half a year. He was wide awake when he made this decision, but immediately prior, he had been wrapped in a doze, from which this clear thought had sprung. Half a year ago, when it was winter in Oslo, his son had lived with him for a while because Armand was about to go on a lengthy trip abroad, and it had seemed fitting that his son, who lived in a little room half an hour’s walk from Armand’s apartment, should move in and look after this spacious apartment, while he, the father, was away. The son moved in with him three or four days before his departure, and lay sleeping in the guest room when Armand left the apartment on a dark winter morning to begin his extended trip abroad by taking a taxi out to Oslo International Airport, which was located at Gardermoen in the Norwegian interior, not far from Lake Mjøsa. From there he took an early-morning flight to a city in central Europe, where he immediately commenced the business which was the purpose of his trip abroad. For week after week he flitted around Europe, by plane or train, until he eventually arrived in one of the absolute largest European metropolises, the last stop on his long foreign sojourn, where he had booked a hotel room for five days. However, he left this city the very next morning, because an appointment he was supposed to have that day had been cancelled, and since he had also begun to suffer from what was for him a surprising but acute sense of boredom from travelling abroad, especially staying in this metropolis, which he had found so pleasant to visit previously, and which he had looked forward to seeing again with his own eyes, wanting to wander through the streets that were so enticing, he decided, at the instant the cancellation of the appointment was confirmed and he had hung up the phone, to pack his bags, take the lift down to the lobby, pay the bill for his stay, and then take a taxi out to the airport, where at the Scandinavian Airlines counter he could exchange his ticket for the next flight to Oslo; there were seats available, because the business that had prompted this trip abroad was such that he had been issued tickets which could easily be altered. He arrived home the same day, his plane having landed at Gardermoen in the late afternoon.

At 6.30 in the evening he unlocked the door to his apartment. It was still wintertime, and snow was coming down. Wet snow, which had settled white on the shoulders of his coat, and which would soon melt as he stood there in the doorway about to hang up his coat on a hook. He heard voices in the apartment, not only his son’s, but also a woman’s. He set down his bags and took a few steps forward, towards the door that stood half open into the living room. But then he stopped short. Through the half-open door he saw a terrible scene. A young man, wearing only underpants, was kneeling before a young, fully dressed woman. A young humiliation. His own son was being debased by a young woman, a girl. The girl tossed her head, and her hair swung softly around her; she gave him such a look of contempt, while his son trembled in his abject state. Armand tiptoed in shock into his own bedroom across the hall and closed the door carefully behind him so as not to make the slightest sound. Once inside he stood there ramrod straight in his winter coat, which he had not yet bothered to take off, and with the snow melting on the shoulders. He was rigid with horror.

He remained standing like that until he eventually heard the young woman come out in the hall with hurried footsteps, pausing a moment, probably to put on her coat, before the front door slammed after her, but he also waited until he ascertained that his son, as expected, hadn’t left the apartment with her, but was still there. Because after a long while he heard hesitant, indistinct footsteps out in the hall, back and forth, until they faded away again, but without any door being closed and locked; on the contrary, his son must have moved in the other direction, his footsteps indistinct, towards the kitchen, and when Armand realised this, he remained standing as if petrified, his back still ramrod straight, wearing his winter coat in his own bedroom, behind his closed door. He was shaken. Such humiliation. His half-naked son on his knees in front of a woman, debased. It was impossible to erase. Forever. The image was bloody and true. He didn’t know what to do about it. Bloody. True. The blood flowed, in the worst way imaginable, the worst conceivable, it was as if he waded in it where he stood. He had to get away. His son’s indistinct footsteps returned, now he was going into the living room. As long as his son was in the living room, Armand could not sneak out to the hall, drag his suitcases into the stair-well, and disappear. He sat down on the edge of the bed, still wearing his winter coat. He had to escape from this situation, but how? He got up, went over to the door, and listened. Not a sound. Where was his son? Was he still in the living room? He’d be able to hear Armand if he went out in the hall and left the apartment. And his suitcases would still be there after he left. Had his son already seen them? If so, why hadn’t he checked to see if his father was in the bedroom? The humiliating scene was awash in blood. He had to stay here until he heard his son’s footsteps again, and he listened again and again to where they took him, until he was utterly certain that they took him, his son, out to the kitchen, and he, Armand, could slip away unnoticed. Finally this happened, and the father, who had long since removed his heavy winter shoes, picked them up and quickly sneaked into the hall, over to the front door, opened it, and then closed it silently, carefully turning the key in the Yale lock.

Then Armand went to a restaurant and ate a decent dinner, with a good bottle of red wine, followed by coffee and cognac. A little after midnight he let himself back into the apartment, which was completely dark. His son had either gone to bed or gone out. Armand hung up his winter coat, changed his shoes, took his suitcases into the bedroom, and unpacked, putting his clothes away in drawers and on shelves, as well as setting all his papers, etc., on a table. Then he went into the bathroom and got ready for bed.

In the morning he met his son, who had just got up and who was, or acted like he was, surprised to see him back home. Armand explained that he had returned the night before because an appointment had been cancelled. His son nodded, saying that it was time he moved back to his own place. His father summoned all his inner strength, his utmost internal reserves, to say in a calm voice that there was no hurry, but his son shrugged and said that he’d had the apartment at his disposal for over a month now, and it was high time he returned to his normal routines. He went into the bedroom he’d been using, and in an amazingly short time he packed and came out with his two bags and said goodbye to his father.

After that Armand didn’t see his son for well over six months, until one morning he woke up and decided that today he would visit him. But the sight he had witnessed in the living room had not faded from his mind. It was just as clear, or unclear, as the day he saw it. He was unable to reconstruct the scene in detail, since he hadn’t seen it clearly. He had seen the young woman, the girl, who had debased his half-naked son. He had not seen anything more, or he was unable to say he had. If he tried, he froze up and turned mute. He wasn’t even able to describe the way in which she had debased his son, except that he was half-naked and kneeling in front of her, wearing only his underpants, while she was fully dressed. Armand tried to shake off the scene by not thinking about his son over the following weeks and months, except in brief, nagging moments, which in itself was not so remarkable, since his son had long since turned twenty years old and had to be regarded as independent both financially and otherwise. And so he hadn’t worried that his son did not contact him.

Now it was obvious to Armand that he wanted to visit his son today. Before noon he left his apartment to take the half-hour walk to where his son lived in a rented room in an apartment building from the 1930s above the Majorstua district, in the direction of Fagerborg. Actually he had something else to do that morning, but he phoned and postponed his plans till the next day. Although, he thought, I should have done the opposite and kept my original appointments, visiting my son tomorrow instead, or early this evening. His son was a student, and he was more likely to find him home in the late afternoon or early evening than in the morning when students were often in the university’s reading rooms or attending seminars. If he’s not at home in his room then he’s not, but I’d better try to visit him now that I’ve already postponed today’s appointments, Armand thought. He’d left his apartment in Skillebekk and walked up Frederik Stangs Gate towards Bygdøy Allé and on towards Frognerveien, which he crossed to continue up towards Briskeby; then turning up to Majorstua and Bogstadveien, where he crossed before he came to the building where his son rented a room in the apartment of an elderly woman. She rented out two rooms because she had only a meagre pension, and in one lived his son; Armand didn’t think he had anything in particular to do with the young man who rented the other room, also a student. But he could be mistaken, because he based his assumptions only on the fact that his son hadn’t mentioned this other student when he had visited his father or had dinner with him at a restaurant, and on the fact that he never saw the student or heard him mentioned when he, Armand, visited his son in his room. Armand had reached the end of Løvenskiolds Gate, up in Briskeby, where the fire station loomed at the top of the hill and where the former transformer station, which had been converted to a restaurant, especially popular among successful young people, was situated on the left-hand side of the street. He then realised that he’d been rather optimistic when he assumed that it was only half an hour’s walk from his apartment in Skillebekk to his son’s room, because now he’d already been walking for twenty minutes and he’d only reached the halfway point. It takes at least forty minutes, he thought, not thirty as he’d assumed. That was because he’d usually driven over there on his previous visits, and the times he’d walked there he had started from a completely different location than his apartment. Well, well, Armand thought as he started walking up Industrigata, though without picking up his pace, because his pace was brisk enough as it was. I’ll get there when I get there, he thought, what makes me think there’s any hurry, he might not even be home, in fact it’s not certain he’ll be there at all. Armand was quite a fit man in his sixties, slim, as he had been his whole life, and he walked with a firm stride up Industrigata. It was a day during the transition between summer and autumn, a late-summer day with delicate but clear glimpses of early autumn, such as in the rustling of the leaves. If anyone had asked him he would have confirmed that he thought he’d had a good life till now, and he wouldn’t have said so just because he realised it would be extraordinarily unfair to claim the opposite, taking into account the circumstances and the outer signs of success so strongly evident in his appearance. But just as resolutely he attempted to quell a powerful internal scream, seeking to dull the memory, the sight, that had prompted it. That’s what he had seen. It was this vision, which had caught up with him, now in the image of his own son. Seeing his own son in such a state. Anyone who had seen his own son in that state would have acknowledged this vision. Even though he didn’t recognise himself in his son’s figure, except as unidentifiable remnants of something, and barely even that, nevertheless he knew that this was a repeated vision, of something he had so inadvertently witnessed on that evening six months before.

He was approaching the building where his son rented his room from the elderly woman. The closer he got, the more impatient he became to see his son again face to face, though he still thought it was highly unlikely that he would be home at this time of day. He stood at the street door and sought out the landlady’s doorbell. He rang the specified number of times to signal a visitor for his son. Two short rings. Visitors to the widow had to press the doorbell for one long ring, and if that didn’t work, pause and try again. The signal for visitors to the other lodger was three short rings. Armand pushed the bell for two short rings, and he actually got a response when the street door buzzed and he pushed it open. The apartment was on the third floor, and when he got up there he rang two more times at the apartment door. He heard footsteps in the entrance hall, and the door opened. There stood his son. He was dressed in a military uniform and greeted his father with an embarrassed smile.

1 C ] His son must have had the embarrassed smile because he hadn’t told his father that he was no longer a student, but was now a soldier. He invited Armand into his room, and there he spent a long time apologising. It had come upon him so suddenly, and there were so many things that had to be arranged.

‘Yes, I don’t doubt that for a moment,’ said his father, ‘because not only did you forget to inform me, but you obviously haven’t had time to give notice to your landlady either, or did you intend to keep the room?’

His son said that’s exactly what he was now wondering. He’d actually intended to give it up, that was what he’d considered doing during this leave, which was also his first, and his father had been fortunate to catch him now, because he was just here to pack before he returned to base. But then he’d changed his mind. Because otherwise where would he live during his leaves?

‘With your mother,’ replied his father, ‘or with me.’

‘I certainly don’t want to stay in my old room at Mum’s place,’ said the son.

His father could have said: ‘What about with me then?’ but he just couldn’t. Instead he sighed and said that he would pay the rent for his poor soldier of a son. By this time he’d been sitting in his son’s room on a kitchen chair watching him finish packing for his return to the base. It’s not true that he’d suspected everything would be fine. But he hadn’t expected this, and he had no idea what to make of it.

2 ] Oslo also had a lot more to offer even in the 1960s, especially for an ambitious young man. Naturally the text now makes quite an amusing point here, drawing a circle from the Humanities building at the university at Blindern and the building of the Norwegian Broadcasting System in Marienlyst, marked with the southern point of the compass (called the Point of Hope), and then continuing to a point on the radius precisely at the Blindernveien stop on the Sognsvann tram line, moving on in a straight line through the circle, then down again to Gyldendal Norsk Publishers, in order to demarcate the geometrical pattern for the ambitious young students of today. But Armand’s life was so much more. It included excursions to a different Oslo, that strange capital with its distinctive, completely anonymous (now vanished) neighbourhoods. One of them he used to visit several times a week, when he had left the reading room at Blindern early in the evening and hurried down Kirkeveien to grab a beer downtown, which began out by Majorstua. There was often a whole flock of students rushing down Kirkeveien, storming at last into one of the many cafes located around the central tram stop at Majorstua (where trams from the whole city started and terminated). At ground level was the Majorstua building with its metro station. Viewed from the hazy distance of memory this flock of students rushing down Kirkeveien reminded him of free birds on a wild flight towards a longed-for warmer country.

But this was not Majorstua and its central tram stop, with all the brown-painted cafes back then that were the essence of the other Oslo, the vanished and anonymous Oslo. This was a stretch of road that the flock of students used to hurry along, oblivious of their surroundings, and now forty years later it stuck in Armand’s mind as the most peculiar big-city street he knew, and his heart beat faster thinking of the joy he’d felt, together with his fellow students, when they rushed along a big-city street like Kirkeveien, which it undoubtedly was for him, the kid fresh from the provinces. That big-city feeling on this anonymous stretch of road between Suhms Gate and the central interchange at Majorstua was exclusively due to the car traffic and the street lighting that hung on wires over the street. Besides being a big-city street, Kirkeveien is also one of the main arteries leading into Oslo and heavily travelled. The big-city feeling is entirely due to the noise of the passing cars; the steady rhythm would be abruptly broken off, back then as now, whenever he had to stop at a pedestrian crossing as the light was flashing red, and this red flashing could be seen from far off, like an eye. Back then, a construction site on both sides of Kirkeveien between Suhms Gate and Majorstua was anonymous and might seem abandoned. The pavements on both sides would be almost deserted except for small flocks of students hurrying down towards Majorstua every now and then.

Later in life, after Armand had long since taken his exams and left the university, he would often come driving up or down Kirkeveien in his car. It may have been in the seventies, eighties, nineties, or at the start of the present century, no matter whether he was living in Norway (in Oslo) or was stationed abroad. Mostly after he was once again living at home, and he always had his own car parked outside. On occasion, like every other driver in the city, he would come driving up or down Kirkeveien. He would again pass that long-gone stretch between Suhms Gate and the Majorstua intersection, but he never paid it any mind, never even glanced at the apartment buildings lining both sides of the road. He naturally concentrated on the traffic lights at the intersection of Suhms Gate, and whether he would make it through before it changed from green to red.

But lately he had renewed his familiarity with this vanished neighbourhood of the capital. Once a month he would stroll along Kirkeveien, taking the pavement along the right side, between the Majorstua intersection and Suhms Gate – the detour to his son’s place, as he called it. Once a month he visited the apartment building where his son rented a room and was let in to the apartment by the old landlady, paying her the rent for his son who had now become a soldier. The old widow preferred that the rent be paid in person, and not through the bank, because then she could receive the rent in cash and sign the son’s rent book that his father would hand to her after paying the required amount. Then Armand would take his leave, after first casting a glance at the closed door of his son’s room, and after listening to hear whether there was any noise coming from inside. He always paid on the first of each month unless it fell on a weekend, when he would pay on the last Friday of the previous month, because he didn’t think it fitting to pay the rent to the old widow on weekends. Even though he wouldn’t run into his son, whom he thought would be on leave at the weekends, he harboured a small hope of seeing him on a Friday, if he visited the old woman on a Friday afternoon when the first of the month fell on a Saturday or Sunday. If it fell on a Monday, he made sure to bring the rent payment to her early in the morning, in the faint hope that his son would head back to base from his weekend leave sometime on Monday, and maybe he hadn’t left his room yet – so far this had never happened.

Armand had a job that made it possible for him to take care of personal errands during what were considered normal working hours as long as he adhered to the agreements and obligations he had signed on to when he took the job. For the past year he’d been walking a lot, or combining taking the tram with walking whenever he had to go somewhere instead of using his car; this was also true when he had errands to run other than stopping to drop off his son’s monthly rent for the old landlady. If he left from his office building he would take the metro from the National Theatre station to Majorstua and walk from there to his son’s rented room. He would cross the Majorstua intersection until he reached the Thune goldsmith shop, then walk up the right side of Kirkeveien towards the traffic lights at Suhms Gate. Then he would head into this now unfamiliar and long-gone neighbourhood of the capital which still triggered such clear memories from the time when he was a university student, and where he now proceeded up to Suhms Gate, while as a student he had walked in the opposite direction, on the other side of Kirkeveien, most often with others, preferably in the midst of a flock of students hurrying along, and he, like they, would glance over to the other side of Kirkeveien, where he was walking right now along the almost deserted pavement, past the cheap imitations of big-city streets. When he reached the traffic lights at Suhms Gate he turned right, though he could have turned in that direction long before and followed Hammerstads Gate almost straight to the apartment building where his son rented a room, but he chose every time to walk up to the traffic lights at Suhms Gate and then turn right, going all the way to Schultz’ Gate and then back down to the area where his son’s rented room was located, a considerable detour. This right side of Kirkeveien, from the Majorstua intersection to the traffic lights at Suhms Gate, had changed a good deal over all these years, not because of how the buildings and pavements looked, but the general appearance of the neighbourhood and shops, and what was supposed to attract people to this part of town, had changed a great deal, although Armand retained a clear perception that everything corresponded to his own sense of time now, let’s say in 2005, as it did in 1965, or a little later. So Armand started with the elegant Thune goldsmith shop, one of the most renowned, which had a branch on this busy corner, where he stopped to admire the jewellery in the window, displayed in the familiar continental manner, each in its own etui, which emphasised that each piece was of such unique character that it must be allowed plenty of space in order to do it justice, even if it was merely a small pearl. But what a pearl! And from this exquisite pearl Armand moved up the right side of Kirkeveien and into one of the most anonymous stretches in downtown Oslo. It is so anonymous that it takes a long time before you realise that that’s exactly what it is. First Pearls & Diamonds Forever, then McDonald’s, and after that the Majorstua post office, before you pass Ole Vigs Gate, and eventually get an idea of what sort of neighbourhood you’ve wandered into. Pearls & Diamonds, McDonald’s and the Majorstua post office are only the bait – bait targeting vastly different mental states and moods, along with different ages and buying power. Armand, for instance, undoubtedly prefers Thune to McDonald’s because of his state of mind, age and buying power. He doesn’t like the McDonald’s logo, which he thinks can only be described as ‘hideous’, a word he normally prefers not to use, for stylistic reasons. The Majorstua post office on the other hand can be characterised as both sedate and venerable, yes, even to the degree that the new decor in the entrance hall doesn’t deprive the ladies in Majorstua of their legendary delicacy and incredible ability to put up with all conditions of the roadway on Kirkeveien and the over-crowded premises of the bakeries in Majorstua when they exit the post office after cashing their benefits or pension cheques. Over on the other side of the street, as you head up the right side of Kirkeveien to the traffic lights at Suhms Gate: KA International, the Bjørke Agency, the Maternity Cabinet, the Miner, Paints for Everyone, Oriento, Kids Interior. Or a furniture shop, which here at the edge of Oslo’s most anonymous urban neighbourhood advertises its international character, with subsidiaries and branches in Madrid, Oslo, London, Paris and Stockholm; and when Armand sees this he might well add a few business connections for himself: Mexico City, Amman, Cairo, Budapest, Buenos Aires, now that he’s enjoying being here in this mood when the relationship between time and reality is somewhat delayed. Next to him is the Bjørke Agency, a speciality shop featuring fireproof and burglar-proof safes, including gun cabinets. It’s next to a shop for pregnant women that sells so-called maternity dresses, and which with a coquettish glance at its neighbour that sells burglar-proof safes and gun cabinets, calls itself the Maternity Cabinet. Next door on the other side is the Miner, which sells jewellery and crystals taken from the mountains by the miner himself. After that comes Paints for Everyone, and then a small Asian cafe, Oriento, before the Bjørke Agency reinvigorates the passers-by, including Armand V. strolling up the street, before he passes Trudvangveien, where Kids Interior occupies the corner. Still not a soul anywhere. Armand crosses to the other side, to a building with no shops on the ground floor. Cars are whooshing up and down. What could be hiding behind that worn-out facade? Does anyone live there? Armand can confirm, after having walked this long detour to and from his son’s place a number of times over the past six months, that he has never seen a single person standing outside the entrance to any of these rented apartments, fiddling with their keys; nor has he ever seen the street door close with a cheerful bang as someone emerges from the inner courtyard, male or female, young or old, child or grown-up. But Pizza Pancetta in the courtyard next door is open. There are staff inside too. People making pizzas and the waiting staff. And in Studio Renée, a barber and beautician’s. Hairdresser’s there, of course. Inside Driver Training Specialist, a man sits at a desk in the middle of the shop reading a newspaper. A steep basement stairway leads down to Rock Bottom Prices, and Armand crosses another street, this time Hammerstads Gate; he could have turned right here and would have been directly in front of the building where his son lives, but he doesn’t. He crosses Hammerstads Gate, and walks along the pavement past the lovely facades of Kirkeveien Flowers and Bjørn Mathisen Antiques. In the florist’s Armand notices several customers before he again crosses and continues up a block consisting of nothing but apartment buildings, before he re-crosses the street again and enters a neighbourhood with a nameless kiosk in a basement, then China Gifts, Thai Massage and Reflexology, and finally another apartment building with no shops on the ground floor; there the traffic lights at the intersection of Suhms Gate are blinking, oddly close, changing regularly, automatically, between green and red. Before he turns right onto Suhms Gate, he sends a long glance down Kirkeveien, across vacant lots and knolls to where the white building of the Norwegian Broadcasting System glows, and Armand looks at his watch to check whether it’s showing the same time as the clock at the top of the building. Down there it’s another world, which lies closer to Armand’s world than the areas he has just strolled through; down there the same gentle promise it used to have still holds.

The last time Armand went to pay his son’s rent to the old widow on the first of the month, he took the tram to Majorstua as usual, crossed the street by the central tram stop, and started up the right side of Kirkeveien, past the branch of the elegant Thune goldsmith shop, then McDonald’s and the Majorstua post office until he crossed Ole Vigs Gate. Spring had arrived, and Armand was dressed in a new light-coloured, almost white, spring coat. He was wearing elegant, pointy-toed Italian walking shoes, made from very thin leather. Around his neck he wore a scarf of pure cashmere wool because of the chilly air, which he especially felt whenever he moved out of the warm springtime sunshine and into the shadows. Armand was a stylish man in his sixties, which was evident as he passed this row of buildings housing Thune the goldsmith, McDonald’s and the Majorstua post office, where there were often the beginnings of a crowd, before crossing Ole Vigs Gate and entering the more sparsely populated area up towards the traffic lights at Suhms Gate. He walked past the row of various businesses between Ole Vigs Gate and Trudvangveien, crossed Trudvangveien, and continued towards the intersection of Hammerstads Gate. Cars were whizzing past on both sides of the central reservation, and Armand’s heart was pumping steadily in the chilly spring sunshine as he walked in his Italian shoes along the dry asphalt. The constant hum of the big city. The desolate aura of this neighbourhood, Armand’s heart pounding. That’s how it should have been yesterday, when he passed by Pizza Pancetta and Studio Renée hairdresser’s for ladies and gents. He noticed that there was a customer in the hair salon, a woman in her fifties sitting under the hood of a hairdryer and reading a magazine. Armand couldn’t help stopping to peer discreetly into the salon. He took a couple of steps back so as not to stand directly in front staring into the salon, pausing a few steps to the right of the shop window. What did this remind him of ? It reminded him of something, that’s why he’d stopped. An incident from another time, in another city, not in Norway, but in some different country? He couldn’t quite recall, but could it have been in Madrid? In spite of everything? But he stopped trying to remember, because now he witnessed an unusual sight. A young man came running down Kirkeveien at full speed. Running as if his life depended on it. Two men were chasing him, but they were heavier and stockier than the guy running ahead, so they couldn’t catch him but fell further and further behind, even though they too were running at what was full speed for them. Behind those two men, further up the street, halfway to the intersection at Suhms Gate, Armand spied an elderly woman. She had straightened up and stood howling at the sky. The first man was now approaching Armand. He was so pale, but he was fast on his feet. As he was about to pass by, Armand couldn’t resist. He wanted to do something, so he stuck out his left foot with his elegant Italian shoe right in front of the running youth, who tripped and fell headlong to the pavement. Armand discreetly withdrew his foot and continued up Kirkeveien, towards the traffic lights at Suhms Gate, as if nothing had happened. His foot hurt, of course, but he ignored the pain and made sure to keep walking with no sign of a limp. The two middle-aged, rather corpulent men puffed past him as Armand kept walking. Up the street he could still see the old lady howling at the sky, and he set off towards her.

But then he changed his mind. Instead of crossing Hammerstads Gate and continuing up towards Åsaveien, he stopped and turned round. He saw that the pale youth had been pulled to his feet by the two middle-aged, rather pudgy men, and one of them was holding the kid’s hands behind his back while the other was talking on his mobile phone. On the pavement lay an old-fashioned handbag, the contents partially strewn into the street. Armand heard sirens and saw the police cars coming down Kirkeveien, and saw them pull to a stop at the kerb. Armand turned round again and on the way up Kirkeveien to the traffic lights at Suhms Gate he passed the old lady, who still stood rooted to the spot, but she had stopping howling and her gaze was fixed on something far down Kirkeveien. He passed her quietly, without offering even a word of consolation, which he probably should have done. At the traffic lights he turned right, and at Schultz’ Gate he turned right again onto the block where his son rented a room. His good mood had vanished, and he was brooding intensely over what had just happened, and his own role in it.

2 B ] Yes, he knew Oslo like the inside of his own trouser pocket, so to speak. That was an expression a lot of people used back then, in the sixties, and he didn’t know why, because what in the world did it mean to know your own pocket? Could it be that it was intimately associated with the concept of ‘pocket pool’, which was also used a lot in those days, so that one expression had no meaning without being associated with the other? Because young men never had much in their front pockets. Usually no more than the keys to their own rented room and a handkerchief. They kept their wallet in a back pocket, which isn’t the same as the front one, since there are two pockets in front and that is where they would stick their hands, and then they might have occasion to play pocket pool, as it was then called, as a sort of distraction. So, he knew Oslo like the proximity of his own dick in a game of distraction.

3 ] The living. And the dead. It’s difficult to express. Maybe it’s like this: even though there have never been as many people living on earth as there are now, still, more of them are dead than alive. As the years go by we approach this majority and the last journey that all of us will take.

Bogstadveien