At first that made her so happy, not only because he’d suggested they make that particular dish for dinner, but also because he’d said he had a craving for it; but then she couldn’t help scrutinizing him every second as they made the spaghetti together, trying to see whether she could observe something that showed, or proved, that it was merely something he’d said because he thought it would please her, and it was not something he’d said because he really did have a craving for spaghetti with pesto, as well as a craving to cook the food together with her. And of course she ended up finding what she was looking for: a trace of distance, a reminder of his joyless interior, maybe for only a second but enough for her to think — no, for her to know — that this too was a mask that he’d assumed, a mask that for a moment had cracked to reveal the same distant attitude that ruled all of his steps, and eventually all of hers as well.

  For Singer, not a single word of this would have come as a surprise. Although he hadn’t heard such words expressed very clearly, he’d still heard enough to know the lay of the land, and even if he hadn’t heard more than the shout “Look at me!” he still would have known. Yet Singer was caught in his own labyrinth, from which he could not get out, nor did he want to get out, maybe because he couldn’t get out. Occasionally, while he was working at the library and performing his routine duties, he might think: if only my whole life would be like this, it would be no big deal. But when he was home or together with his little family in some other setting, then he would notice that his own preoccupied state was not to be borne, not by anyone. He had no wish to break up his marriage, he would prefer to stay in the marriage, which meant in spite of the fact that he’d made himself into a more or less unwelcome guest at home, he made no attempt to leave; on the contrary, he settled in more comfortably, even though he knew this was impossible. He wished he could banish the distance he felt and his state of mind, but even that was something he could not manage. In spite of all the brooding, what preoccupied him didn’t even have to do with the big questions regarding the meaning of life, the nature of existence, or what we associate with the absolute otherness, and similar questions that we rightly categorize as profound questions requiring profound and preoccupied thoughts from all those silently asking themselves these questions; instead, the thoughts preoccupying him were completely random, for instance when he further speculated about something he’d read in a book or a newspaper; or he might sit preoccupied and brooding about a current political issue, eagerly discussing it with a fictitious opponent as he tried out his arguments; not to mention the times when something simply got his thoughts moving, randomly, without purpose or intent, like abstract figurations, obscure meaningless rhymes and word combinations; or some sudden destination might pop into his mind, a place to which he immediately traveled in his imagination. But in spite of what was unnecessary and futile in all of this, he couldn’t manage to tear himself loose, even though he realized the possible consequences that this type of transparent and glass-like thought process, as he now and then called it, with great pain, might lead to, both for himself and for others. He couldn’t manage to tear himself loose in order to “Look at her!” as she wanted. At the library he checked in books and checked out others as he stamped them. He cataloged new books, inspected old ones, and took a keen interest in the new computer system, in which everything was to be entered, and which heralded a new era and completely new routines. But he could not “Look at her!” Why not? Because he regarded it as an impossible demand and assumed she knew this. When she shouted like that, she was shouting for an obligatory action on his part, and when he therefore turned toward her, she knew that she was seeing a Singer who was looking at her in an obligatory way, and that his nonevasive amiability was a plea to be understood in a different manner. But if she didn’t want to understand, and be understood, in this different manner, there was little he could do, and that too she knew, or so he assumed, in a glass-like way, which combined with other glass-like ways of relating to life, in this distant attitude of his, which was his way of living and withstanding that which he, perhaps all alone in the world, experienced as unbearable.

  But then, eleven years ago, on a winter day in February just like today, a young hothead lost his patience in a long line of cars on the E-18 and made a foolhardy attempt to pass. But he didn’t make it past the whole line before he saw oncoming traffic racing toward him, and since there was no space for him to slip into, he stomped on the brakes, but he braked so hard that he lost control of the car on the slippery road and swerved and crashed right into another car with a violent bang that made people in the nearby houses in that small but densely populated area rush to their windows. In that screeching bang of a crash the young hothead died, but he also took with him into death the driver of the other car, the thirty-two-year-old Merete Sæthre. And as a result, T. Singer, at the age of thirty-nine, became a widower, and the six-and-a-half-year-old Isabella became motherless.

  The funeral for Merete Sæthre was held in the chapel of Not­odden cemetery, where she was afterward laid to rest, in a snowdrift. The chapel was packed during the funeral, and in the front pew sat Singer and his stepdaughter Isabella. Next to them, in the same pew, sat Merete’s parents, her brother, and her sister-in-law. Behind them sat other relatives, along with a large group of Merete’s friends and acquaintances, some of whom were also Singer’s friends and acquaintances, including Merete Holtan and Nils Hartvigsen. All of his colleagues from the library were also in attendance, and the library was closed. Inge­mann was present; Singer saw him and spoke to him at the reception that followed at Villa Bergly.

  This meaningless death seemed doubly meaningless to those closest to her because it had happened at a place where they thought it surprising for Merete Sæthre to have been at all. She lost her life in a car accident on the E-18, but at that moment she should have been on the E-11, somewhere between Drammen and Kongsberg, because she’d been in Oslo and was supposed to be on her way home to Not­odden. The E-11 wasn’t simply the fastest route, it was the only route, unless you intended to take a big detour, which is what Merete Sæthre had apparently decided to do. This irregularity made Merete’s death even more incomprehensible than it would have been, and her parents in particular couldn’t let this go; they kept circling around it again and again, even though Singer tried to console them by saying that Merete had previously taken a detour on the E-18 and then turned inland, either at Sande or Holmestrand. This might have been understandable on a summer day, but not on a gray winter day, when almost nothing was visible, everything seemed erased in a gray-white haze. But maybe that’s what had attracted her, said Merete’s brother, Per Christian. The silence of the winter landscape. Her parents accepted this, maybe they even thought it was a lovely notion, which for a moment muted their pain, even though Merete never got that far, she never entered the winter landscape between Sande and Kongsberg, or Holmestrand and Kongsberg; instead the thread of her life was abruptly severed in the middle of the E-18, near a densely populated area. And by the way, the area was Sande, and when Martin Sæthre, Merete’s father, realized that, he was able to determine that the accident occurred right before Merete would have exited the E-18 and headed into the enticing, winter-silent landscape along the R-32. This made the randomness of Merete’s death even more painful. A hundred meters, that was all that had separated her from life, a hundred meters that she could have covered by driving a little faster, a hundred meters that the hothead in the fatal vehicle could have delayed reaching by losing his patience some seconds later. Then Merete would have slipped onto the R-32 and enjoyed the silence of the gray-white landscape past Hoff and Hvittingfoss and from there along Numedalslågen, the river now frozen in the wintertime. In that sense, Merete’s death might be experienced as triply meaningless and in truth a terrible injustice, struck down as she was by blind chance, though there had been three crystal-clear opportunities to avoid this happening.

  In spite of the triple coincidences at play when it came to Merete’s precious life, coincidences that kept circling through their minds, Merete’s parents had to think about the future. Merete had left behind a young child, after all. What was to become of little Isabella? Singer said that she should live with him, as before. Merete’s parents said that she was not his child, she was Merete’s, and therefore he shouldn’t think it was his duty to care for her. But Singer said that he did see it as his duty, and there was nothing to discuss. Isabella’s grandparents on her father’s side were also present at the funeral, but their son had relinquished any responsibility for Isabella, which meant that her paternal grandparents had no claim to assert. Merete’s parents said that life had to go on, and that it might be best for the child if she lived with her own family; even though they were close to sixty, they were in good health and had plenty of energy for taking care of a grandchild. They didn’t picture her growing up in their own house, since they might fall ill or in some other way become incapacitated in the coming years, but she could live with Merete’s brother, Per Christian, and his wife; then she’d grow up among siblings — her cousins, a boy of eight and a girl of five — and still have close contact with her grandparents, who would daily welcome her into their home, because Per Christian Sæthre and his wife also lived in Not­odden, and they were both teachers. So all the arrangements had been made for Isabella, and she would have a good upbringing, if he, Singer, after thinking things through, should find it difficult to take care of her. Even though he now said that he would take on this obligation, as Merete’s husband, he didn’t need to do so. But Singer repeated that Isabella should live with him; she was Merete’s daughter, after all.

  And this was something they couldn’t deny. When Singer put it that way, they couldn’t for a moment allow themselves to doubt that he was voicing the express wishes of the deceased. They couldn’t allow themselves to imagine that their deceased daughter would not have wanted her husband to take care of her daughter and continue to provide her with the home that was hers. At the very least they could not allow themselves to doubt this, because Merete had never said anything to the contrary. Since Merete hadn’t personally revealed to her parents what her marriage to Singer had been like, especially during the last year, they couldn’t say anything, or even think anything different. And there was nothing to indicate that Merete had said anything; maybe they had sensed something, but she hadn’t said anything to them. That much Singer could tell. Their desire to take in Isabella wasn’t based on any knowledge that the relationship between Merete and Singer was on the verge of dissolving, but rather on a feeling that the death had decisively parted their daughter from Singer, who was left behind so painfully isolated, without any real connection to what Merete had left, meaning Isabella, their grandchild. Out of sheer instinct they now regarded Singer as a foreign body in relation to them, and especially in relation to their granddaughter, and they opposed seeing her grow up in the home of a man who was indifferent to her, even though she had lived with this man for more than four years now, but under the secure protection of her mother. Should this stranger, Singer, become her guardian, instead of allowing her to grow up under the natural protection of her own family? But out of consideration for the deceased, they didn’t voice these kinds of thoughts. When their daughter’s widower quietly and firmly made it clear that Isabella should live with him, as she had before, Berit Sæthre, Merete’s mother, could do nothing except say through her tears: “Before you were three, but now there are only the two of you left. You two must stick together.”

  With these tearful words brimming with emotions impossible to comprehend, Isabella was left in Singer’s charge. With these words Berit Sæthre tried, as did her husband, to draw closer to Singer in their sorrow. The man to whom they now handed over their granddaughter seemed to them deeply sincere because he was honoring their daughter’s memory by taking on this obligation, which he certainly didn’t need to take on. Berit Sæthre wept, and her husband wept, and Singer himself wept, embracing first Berit Sæthre and then Martin Sæthre. In the background stood Merete’s brother, Per Christian, and his wife Henriette, and they too were deeply moved. There was a sincerity and a closeness among them that cannot be described in words, because it is impossible to comprehend this scene. Yet it was utterly necessary, because they were acting in the presence of death and the demands that death makes on those who have been affected, when it strikes close, involuntarily and mercilessly. Death makes us social animals. Never are we more animallike; we are swallowed up — skin and all — by what is instinctual. We are encoded, just like a dog or a cat is encoded, and just as much trapped by our instincts as they are, and yet it’s our behavior governed by this code that separates us most decisively from animals, because this code is sewn into the human consciousness, which now, at our most weighty and least comprehensible moment, automatically governs our steps and determines our behavior within a disciplined and socially acceptable context. Singer, from the moment he received word of the death, had acted automatically with regard to the great sorrow he was now forced to bear. He had behaved appropriately, without having to think about it. He had automatically said the right words and done the right things. He had behaved with a subdued and frozen grief, which occasionally, as in this scene, might be transformed into a violent outpouring of tears as he received other people’s sincerity and their fumbling attempts to draw close. He was completely subordinated to this social, instinctual discipline. He was the carrier of a human code, which demanded to be manifested in precisely the way he manifested it, by means of exclusively voicing formal phrases and expressing conventional emotions in the most banal and sentimental manner, because death will not tolerate anything else. Plain and simple. Death will not tolerate anything else. It demands that we surrender, without inhibition, to our helplessness. Singer knew this; in fact, he knew it so well that every time during this period when he was tempted to observe himself from the outside and watch from a distance to see how he was behaving (which was something that had always come natural to Singer), he regarded this opportunity for self-observation with horror, and literally chased it away, fully aware that if he’d allowed the vision of himself to slip inside, into his consciousness, if only for a brief moment, he would have been committing a mortal sin.

  This scene took place in Singer’s home, in the rowhouse apartment, after the funeral and reception. Berit and Martin Sæthre, along with their son Per Christian and his wife, had gone home with Singer so they could all be together, alone, after the official program was over. Closeness in grief. The others were finding it difficult to tear themselves away and leave Singer alone with Isabella. They were reluctant to let the thirty-nine-year-old widower be alone with his grief on the day of the funeral, wanting instead to stay and share it with him, even until the next day dawned. Berit and Martin Sæthre suggested that they stay overnight, but Singer said that wasn’t necessary. They weren’t sure whether this was merely politeness on his part and said that it might be difficult to have responsibility for Isabella on this particular night when he was so shattered by so many other thoughts. But Singer said he would manage, it was just as well to look to the future at once, it might even make things easier to do so. Yes, perhaps it would make things easier to do so, repeated Berit Sæthre, and again tears flooded down the heavy makeup on her rough cheeks. And again Singer embraced her, and again he felt tears streaming down his own cheeks. And in that manner they said goodbye. And Singer was left alone with Isabella. He took off his dark suit and changed into ordinary clothes. His stepdaughter was sitting on the floor, next to the table in the living room, next to one of the table legs, wearing beige tights and playing with a rag doll. Occasionally she would get up to find something and twirl around, and then he saw that her tights were sagging, having slipped down and formed baggy rolls around her ankles, and he went over to her and picked her up as he pulled her tights back into place. Then she sat down on the floor again, next to the table leg, and resumed playing. After a while Singer happened to think of something, and he glanced as his watch, but it was too late for any children’s programs on TV, it was past time for that. For a moment he thought he ought to say, oh, looks like we forgot to watch the kids’ show on TV, but he thought it wouldn’t be appropriate to say something like that, and since Isabella hadn’t said anything about the kids’ show on TV, he thought it would be best not to mention it at all. Instead, he fixed dinner, but Isabella had eaten so much all day that she wasn’t hungry. Instead she was allowed to play a little longer until Singer said it was bedtime. He went with her up to her room, and when she was under the covers, he read to her for a while. Then he said good night and went back downstairs, but he left the door to her room ajar so she’d be able to call to him. And she did several times, and each time Singer went up to see to her until she fell asleep.

  Singer sat alone in his own living room, surrounded by the familiar objects that had been his daily setting, his private home, for more than four years now. He was exhausted but tremendously tense. He sensed a great uneasiness, and he didn’t dare suffer it alone. He had to talk to somebody. So he called Inge­mann at the Telemark Hotel. Inge­mann had told Singer during the reception that he’d booked a room at the Telemark Hotel in case Singer felt a need to talk to him. But when Singer called the hotel, he was told that Inge­mann had checked out because something had come up and he needed to return to Oslo that very evening. Inge­mann was no longer employed by the Riksteatret but had started as a freelancer and often did work for NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting System, mostly for radio but also sometimes for TV, and Singer assumed that it was in this connection that he’d been forced to go back to Oslo tonight.

  Singer hung up the phone. He was pensive. Not because Inge­mann had left but because he realized when he heard that Inge­mann was gone, it wasn’t Inge­mann he wanted to talk to. Actually, it was Inge­mann he wanted to talk to, but that was because he didn’t dare talk to the people he should be talking to. Inge­mann couldn’t have done anything but listen to him and now and then offer encouraging remarks; that would have been reassuring, but that was not the reason that he now needed to talk to someone. He should have talked to Nils Hartvigsen, the lawyer. Not because he was a lawyer, but because he was married to Merete’s best friend. He was the person he should have talked to. He would ask him whether he knew that he and Merete were going to get a divorce, whether Merete had told them, or told her. Of course she would have mentioned it to her best friend, in some form or other, as a fact or as a possibility. So he needed to call Nils Hartvigsen, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.