But that’s what he did. Over the course of a couple of months he gave up the basement studio apartment that he was renting from the upper-level municipal official and moved in with Merete Sæthre, in a rowhouse apartment in a residential neighborhood on the same slope where the teachers college was located. What sort of clock was ticking inside the thirty-four-year-old librarian that caused him to do this? He moved right into that vulnerable and intimate sphere, with open eyes. Into an unfamiliar apartment with a number of qualities that were not his own. With a woman who, in this book up until now, has been described only as a friend of the lawyer’s wife. To live with this unknown woman, as her husband. With this woman, who also happened to have a small child, two years old, from a previous relationship.

  Because that was what she had. Two years earlier, Merete Sæthre had given birth to a daughter, Isabella. At the time she had just returned to her hometown after spending more than ten years away. She had trained as a ceramicist in Oslo and abroad, and she’d also worked as a ceramicist in artist collectives in Helsinki and Copenhagen, among other places. While on a study trip to Germany she’d gotten pregnant by a man who was practically a stranger. She’d met him in Karlsruhe, he was a Norwegian who happened to be traveling through on his way to Zurich. He refused to acknowledge Merete Sæthre’s pregnancy and wanted nothing to do with the future world citizen. He went to live in Latin America, which was something he’d planned to do well before Merete Sæthre happened onto his path. And so Merete Sæthre moved back to Not­odden and gave birth to her child there. For a brief time the mother and daughter lived with Merete’s parents, both of them teachers, before she, with generous help from them, found this row-house apartment, which was where Singer now moved in.

  It must have been a drastic change in Singer’s life! He had barely grown accustomed to his new life in Not­odden before he ended up a man with a small family of three: husband, wife, and a little child! Did he know what he was getting into? Of course he knew what he was getting into, he went into it with open eyes. Dazzled by Merete Sæthre’s very being, he moved toward her with pleasure and took his place as the husband in her little family. Not only did he glorify her, but she must have glorified Singer as well. In any case, during that fall Singer was eagerly preoccupied with getting a driver’s license, which he succeeded in doing shortly after the new year. Of course it was because of the strong urging and steady encouragement from Merete that he took this step, and even achieved his goal. Not for a moment had he ever considered getting a license or driving a car; he’d managed quite well without it, but Merete had insisted, she claimed it was essential to have a driver’s license if you were going to live in small Norwegian towns, there was no getting around it. Besides, she was looking forward to seeing him as a driver, sitting behind the wheel of a car; that was a sight she would enjoy, and she was looking forward to it. Singer behind the wheel. And so: with a little shrug, merrily delivered, Singer trooped over to see his new teacher, the driving instructor. So that Merete would be able to see Singer behind the wheel of her old Lada station wagon. And that was what she saw shortly after the new year, and after that Singer could often be seen driving around Not­odden and the surrounding area. Behind the wheel of the old Lada station wagon. Next to him in the front seat was his wife. In the back seat, in an appropriately designed child’s seat and securely strapped in was little Isabella. They went for Sunday drives, even when the roads were icy, up to Tuddal and to the foot of Mount Gaustatoppen to go skiing. Sitting behind the wheel, Singer focused his attention on the narrow, winding roads. This is Singer, a glorified version of the Singer we know.

  At home they spent a lot of time in the kitchen. Merete Sæthre liked to cook, spending a lot of time turning the simplest and cheapest ingredients into the most delicious dishes. If this had generally been a happier, not to mention a more lighthearted, book, then at the very end of the book there should have been a section with Merete Sæthre’s best recipes; unfortunately that’s not going to happen, for reasons that we’ll soon explain. During her stay in Helsinki, Merete had developed a taste for Russian cuisine, and during her stay in Copenhagen she became a lover of Italian cuisine. She loved pasta and liked to make her own. She made pasta with her own hands, from scratch, utilizing only a very sharp knife. At first Singer sat and watched her; he sat on a chair and liked to watch the way she deliberately set to work with her elegant fingers at the kitchen table and kitchen counter. But eventually Merete insisted that he should help. They should cook together. That was how Singer became a wizard in the kitchen. He learned to make the most delicious dishes. He, too, could make pasta from scratch, with his own hands, and utilizing only a very sharp knife. As a husband he also decided to buy his own pasta machine, imported from Italy and procured by Inge­mann from a specialty shop, not in Oslo, but in Copenhagen. Merete loved the fact that he’d bought that pasta machine. They didn’t use it often, but there it sat, and they could look at it sitting there, all shiny steel, as they kneaded the dough and cut it with the very sharp knife, and now they had two knives. Singer also learned to bake bread. Yes, he became a real wizard with bread dough, inventively using the rarest of herbs in the yeasty dough. You should have seen him at work in the kitchen, wearing a simple and rustic apron as he leaned over the roasting oven, opening the door and taking out the most delicious of breads that had risen perfectly. Or as he lifted the lid off a pot and breathed in the delightful aroma of a hearty meat soup that had simmered for hours, made from a marrowbone, or as he made one of the heavenly sauces in which he eventually took such pride. Or why not show him making pierogies?

  Yet in scenes like these, as time passed, you might often find him alone in the kitchen, because even though he and Merete cooked together for parties or on weekends, it was left more and more to him to cook their meals on a daily basis. Not always, far from always, but quite often Singer would have the kitchen to himself as he stood there conjuring forth a minestrone soup, or a spaghetti Bolognese, or how about a carbonara today, which is not — as Singer might have been inclined to think six months earlier — an Italian word for hamburger patties, but instead an exquisitely ordinary spaghetti dish made with egg yolks, a dash of cream, and bacon. Sure, spaghetti carbonara today. And by the time Merete and little Isabella came home to the rowhouse apartment early in the evening — after Merete had spent a long day in her ceramics workshop and then picked up her daughter from the home of her parents, who in turn had picked up the child at the daycare center, because her parents were so good about babysitting so that Merete could have some relief — the ingredients had already been mixed and the spaghetti was boiling.

  And while Merete takes off her daughter’s outdoor clothes and then she and Isabella both settle in, Singer sets the table, turns off the boiling water with the spaghetti, which he drops into a colander, where it rests for a couple of seconds before he pours it into a bowl. Then he mixes the ingredients with the spaghetti, and voilà, the dish is done and he sets it on the table, at the very instant that Merete and little Isabella come into the kitchen, hungry after a long day. They sit down at the table. Is anything missing? No, everything is there, even the parmesan cheese — genuine parmesan, bought in an exclusive cheese shop in Oslo, and personally delivered by Inge­mann at Singer’s request, in connection with his visit two weeks earlier. Singer can take off his rustic apron and sit down at the table, where Merete is already sitting with her little daughter, who is seated in a highchair. Truly, this is the real Singer. The man who finds himself incognito in Not­odden.

  There’s no doubt about it. Under the influence of his love, Singer has undeniably changed. You would hardly recognize in him the man who was previously described in this book. If you see him now, he’s a person who has been created and kept going by Merete Sæthre. Yes, you can safely say that the Singer we now see is a man created in the image that Merete Sæthre has of him. But we also need to add that this is Singer’s own choice, freely taken. He is a man created by Merete Sæthre’s image of him, but not without a certain delight from the adoring man himself. In other words, he is a man who is reaching out toward the glorified figure of himself that a woman, who loves him, has created for him, a figure he wishes to inhabit fully and completely. He grabs the car key that is lying on the table in the entryway, steps outside, and goes over to the car. He opens the car door, gets in behind the wheel, sticks the key in the ignition, and honks impatiently for the others who are still inside the apartment. He’s waiting for them, and now he sees them come running. This is the figure of Singer, glorified by Merete Sæthre. Her eyes are sparkling. How they sparkle as she sits down at the table, where a huge portion of spaghetti carbonara is steaming in the bowl on the table, and with a look of satisfaction Singer takes off his rustic apron and he too sits down.

  Her eyes may continue to sparkle, but he can’t join her in everything. He can’t reach out toward her image of him in those areas where he can’t see any glorification of himself, but on the contrary sees something else, something threatening, something calculating and false, although he can also see how tempting it might be, if it had been possible to inhabit this other figure fully and completely. He’d like to be a glorified figure of himself, created by her image of him, but he cannot, nor does he want to become her dream hero. If he’d been able to, he would have done it, because then he would have taken the last step, and that would have been marvelous in its lunacy, but he can’t do it.

  There were a number of things he couldn’t do. He could teach himself to cook and even teach himself to enjoy cooking, for her sake, but she was not allowed to tamper with his wardrobe, or lack thereof. On that score he was adamant. She had to make do with a couple of shirts given as Christmas presents and/or birthday presents; on those occasions she was allowed free rein to find him something in accordance with her own sophisticated taste, go ahead, but there was no question of completely changing the way he dressed, and Merete did realize this, however reluctantly.

  “I like you best the way you are,” she said, with a sparkling smile, even though his appearance hardly appealed to Merete Sæthre’s refined taste. But she sparkled nevertheless. She loved someone who was her complete opposite. Of course. Singer understood this. He realized that he had to stand his ground if he wanted to keep his old wardrobe, and also refuse to get new glasses.

  The woman in love had a hard time keeping her hands off his glasses. At first she wanted him to wear contact lenses.

  “You do?” asked Singer. He actually felt offended and said as much.

  “No,” she then replied. “No, I don’t. But new frames. New frames for your glasses, that would be exciting.”

  But Singer made it clear that he didn’t think new frames would be at all exciting. For his part, he didn’t give a shit, he didn’t care whether his glasses were round or rectangular, steel-framed or plastic; for that matter he could have easily allowed Merete Sæthre to find him completely new and up-to-date frames. That would have pleased Merete, although not in the long term. And so Singer clung steadfastly to what he had; his old appearance was perfectly fine, also in terms of what was in front of his eyes, and in that way he underscored that he had not been reborn, that he was his good old self in the midst of intoxicating love, no matter how much his life had otherwise been turned upside down. And he thought she liked this. Doing the opposite would have made her regard him with suspicion: who exactly is this man behind the guise that I’ve given him? Now she had no doubt that Singer was his good old self, although she had no idea what constituted that.

  A rustic, masculine apron when I bake bread, that’s fine, spaghetti carbonara, that’s fine, and a refined shirt for my thirty-fifth birthday as well, but otherwise: my good old suit, in the same boring and anonymous style as before. Do you understand? Yes, Merete Sæthre understands. This is his personality, which makes her sparkle, even though she would have dressed him in something she regarded as truly handsome.

  It was not the fancy or ultramodern that Merete Sæthre was looking for, but something individual, something distinctive, something more exciting or bold in color choice. She didn’t care whether the colors matched but she wanted them to be bold and refined. She would have liked to see him in bright red pants, for example; Singer was sure of that, and he knew what that looked like because he’d seen men walking around wearing bright red pants, and that wasn’t for him. And honestly, it would have been impossible, it would have been a breach of something deep-seated in him, something he wasn’t able to breach. All the things that he actually did for her were not a breach of something deep-seated in him, they didn’t make him seem conspicuous in his own eyes. They were unused aspects of himself, somewhat unremarkable and little-noticed aspects, but he had no problem with summoning them forth and behaving in a way that would please her, as well as himself. The man behind the wheel. The bread baker. The man who prepares dinner for his little family. Dinner for his little, bogus family. These were new aspects of himself, which he regarded with a sense of disbelief and almost humorous astonishment whenever he thought about it. He was content with the life he was living, under the influence of love. Added to this was a secret satisfaction that was a blatant extension and realization of Singer’s purpose in moving to Not­odden. Now, as the husband in a nuclear family of three, with the car in the parking space outside the rowhouse, Singer was living in complete hiding in Not­odden. If his purpose was to come here as an anonymous librarian in order to live incognito in Not­odden, he had now, in this surprising manner, completely succeeded. No one could find him here, he had disappeared without a trace from whatever or whomever it was he had wished to disappear from, or so it seemed to him, evoking a deep sense of contentment in his heart.

  Merete Sæthre was a ceramicist. It was in this capacity that she could be introduced in this book, as the friend of the lawyer’s wife. Merete Sæthre and the lawyer’s wife were such good friends in large part because they were both ceramicists, and they were now looking for premises in which it would be suitable for them to share a workshop. The lawyer’s wife had recently arrived in Not­odden and hadn’t yet started up her work, while Merete Sæthre had been working here for more than a year, albeit in rather makeshift and miserable premises. Nevertheless, she immediately invited the lawyer’s wife to share her kiln until they each found something better. After a while they realized that they got along so well that they could look for a workshop together. That was what they were now searching for. Together they trawled the town, and they never passed up an opportunity to tell everyone under the sun what they were looking for. Singer found it a constant source of amusement that the premises they had discussed so thoroughly on the evening he attended the dinner party, hosted by his colleague and her husband, were the premises where not only the lawyer’s wife but also his future wife would be working. And on that evening Singer had associated nothing with his future wife, he didn’t even know that the lawyer’s wife, whom he’d only just met, had a female friend.

  The lawyer’s wife and Merete weren’t the only ones searching; Singer (from his foothold in the library) and the lawyer, in particular, also helped them search. Many people will now claim that since Singer married Merete Sæthre, the author should provide the name of the lawyer’s wife (Merete’s best friend). There is much to be said for such a viewpoint, and it can now be revealed that the name of the lawyer’s wife is Merete Holtan, and that her husband is the lawyer Nils Hartvigsen. Attorney Hartvigsen spent a great deal of time tracking down premises, potential sites that had attributes worth investigating, especially in terms of finances. And in the end, he happened upon an overgrown and moss-covered brick building in a declivity or hollow down by the Tinn River, close to the center of town, close to the hill leading up to Villaveien, slightly to the right; Attorney Hartvigsen had turned and headed down yet another slope, at a slight angle, and there it was. The place was for sale for next to nothing, they practically received a finder’s fee for having found it at all, but the renovation would be expensive, of course. So expensive that Attorney Hartvigsen was compelled to reveal that he was actually a carpenter. Not only that, he was actually a mason, as well. Not to mention what a hard worker he would be. So what about Singer? With a modest expression Singer admitted that he might not be a carpenter, or a mason, but he was certain that he would be an excellent assistant and an exceptionally hard worker. So they set to work with volunteer labor. Attorney Hartvigsen sawed, and Singer held the wood, while the two women gathered all the creative people in Not­odden — and in our day there were an extraordinary number of them — to do one thing or another. And Singer held, and Singer carried, and Singer did everything he was asked to do, moving among all these creative people who hammered, painted, sewed, carried, and installed the electrical wiring, and he was reticently present the whole time, until the new ceramics workshop of Merete & Merete was ready, a point of pride for the old industrial town in the middle of the country.

  The moss-covered, overgrown building had become a ceramics workshop, and also a gallery space and shop. Most of the square footage was allocated to the workshop, but both the gallery and the shop were important parts of the business, because it was here that other ceramicists besides Merete & Merete could stage exhibits, and not only ceramicists but also painters, sculptors, weavers, graphic artists, and photographers, who in ever-increasing numbers settled in Not­odden and in the surrounding countryside. In other words, Merete Sæthre suddenly found herself holding a central position in a creative and artistic setting, as its prime mover, along with her friend and namesake. Ideas flourished, and new artists were constantly arriving. People appeared who called themselves installation artists, and in the late 1980s a pale young man showed up, calling himself a video artist and computer operator. The gallery space of Merete & Merete was immediately put at his disposal for a Christmas exhibition. Not­odden had never seen anything like it, and people flocked to the premises to see the exhibit with their own eyes, doing so without making the usual derogatory remarks about art and artists in our day. And while the exhibition was still going on, Merete and Merete were in the process of planning a performance exhibit, and for that occasion they were in the process of training three interested teachers from the Not­odden Teachers College to become live works of art. But in between all this, they fired ceramic pieces in the kilns; the two women turned their pottery wheels, forming pots with practiced hands and confident, tasteful looks, and out of the kilns emerged one ceramic piece after another, to be then carried over to the small shop from which they made their living.