During the first weeks Singer spent a lot of time taking Isabella around Oslo so that she’d become familiar with the big, and for her possibly frightening, city. The buildings were so much bigger than those she was used to, and it was possible that they might seem oppressive to her. There was much more traffic on the streets, and the sidewalks were much more crowded. In general, everything was much bigger and more intense. For example, there were plenty of beggars, and every now and then drunks would appear, and the eerie wail of sirens resounded through the streets, and all of a sudden the traffic would stop except for a vehicle with flashing blue lights speeding among the halted cars; they were police cars with howling sirens, or ambulances on their way with accident victims or deathly ill patients, or on rare occasion fire trucks responding to an alarm. It was to this new world that Singer wanted to introduce his stepdaughter, because from now on she would grow up here, and she would regard this city as her own.

  From now on Isabella was an Oslo girl, just as Singer was a forty-year-old Oslo man, holding a responsible position at the venerable Deich­man Library. Isabella had not had any desire to move to Oslo, but when she was told that was what would happen, she accepted the decision without protest. He’d heard her tell others that when the summer was over, she was going to move to Oslo, and that’s where she would go to school, but he hadn’t been able to discern anything in her voice that might indicate she was looking forward to this, nor that she was dreading it, or that she didn’t want to go. Maybe she wasn’t sure herself, maybe she had no words to express what she was feeling about this move, other than knowing it was something that occasionally happens to children. Even though the move meant she would be torn away from the entire life she’d lived so far, there was nothing to indicate that she was in any way distressed. These things happen.

  Singer showed her Oslo. He did so on Thursday afternoons, when the stores stayed open later than usual, until six or seven o’clock, and for that reason the streets were crowded with people rushing to and fro, a restless bustling that Singer thought Isabella should experience because it was the pulse of the big city. Otherwise they would stroll along the streets in the quiet of Sunday afternoons; then the mood was different, then the city stretched before them, naked and pure, like some sort of structure within which it felt good to roam. Singer showed Oslo to Isabella. The big city’s pulse and its pure structure. They would leave the apartment on Suhms gate and head down to Majorstua. From there they took either the blue tram through the city, via Bogstadveien or via Frogner, or they took the subway. The first time they took the blue tram via Frogner, but even as they were waiting for it, Singer thought that he was looking forward to taking Isabella on the subway and watching her as they traveled underground in the dark even though it was the middle of the day. And that’s what they did the next time. They waited at the Majorstua station and watched as the red train came toward them on the tracks, then stopped — and they got on. Suddenly it was dark, the red train sped through the dark, they heard the train humming, but outside the window it was completely dark. Then suddenly: a station. In the middle of the dark, underground, a station appeared where people were standing close together on the platform, down here, deep underground, staring straight ahead at those sitting inside the cars. And there was a strange light from the underground stations; Singer saw that Isabella thought it was strange, though she didn’t say anything, nor did she press her nose against the windowpane. After that the train again disappeared into the tunnel, and they rode for many minutes in a narrow and cramped darkness before they once again entered a carved-out, lit-up station underground, where the train stopped, and they got off and walked effortlessly up into the day, to the open streets of the city, to the air and the sun, or possibly to gray clouds.

  Or they took the blue tram, sitting on board and allowing themselves to wind their way leisurely through the city, traveling along the predetermined laid-out tracks. Up in the light, through Oslo’s streets, from north to south, from west to east, through the city’s structures, past the tall buildings and all the people they caught clear glimpses of, moving around the center of Oslo on this afternoon before the shops closed at seven. Singer showed Oslo to Isabella, it was the city that would become hers. The underground stations. Allowing themselves to be conveyed by the blue tram. The Steen & Strøm department store, that six-story building filled with merchandise on every floor, where they rode the escalators up all six floors and back down again. People everywhere, and merchandise. Things. All sorts of things. Singer was easily overwhelmed by them all, and then he grew so tired, worn out, even despondent, that they couldn’t stay long inside Steen & Strøm, only long enough to ride up the escalators, all six floors, and back down again.

  Singer showed Oslo to eight-year-old Isabella. He showed her the sea lions in front of the National Gallery, and the heraldic lions in front of Storting, the parliament. Statues of famous men, including the Norwegian author Henrik Wergeland. He showed her the Royal Palace, seen through a tram window on Drammensveien, as the tram headed down toward the National Theater. He showed her the Royal Palace seen from Karl Johans gate, where it towered at the top of the hill. He showed her the Royal Frederik University. The parliament. The National Theater. The National Gallery. The city hall. The main train station. The Plaza Hotel. The Hotel Viking, which was the Olympia Hotel in 1952, and which had now been given a new name, though Singer didn’t care for it. The Grand Hotel, with the Grand Café, where everyone from Not­odden goes whenever they’re in Oslo, along with everyone from the towns of Porsgrunn, Sandefjord, Larvik, and Moss. The Hotel Continental with its elegant Theater Café, where Singer had once dined. He showed her the fake towers at Frogner. The decorations on the building facades. The American Embassy. Norsk Hydro’s headquarters. The University Library. The famous bronze doors of the Gyldendal Norsk publishing company and the equally famous black mailbox of the Aschehoug publishing company. He showed her the equestrian statue of Karl Johan, seen from behind, meaning from the back side of the palace in Parkveien, and through a gap in that same palace. And just before seven p.m. he was able to show her the crowds outside the big movie theaters on Klingenberggata, the lit torches in front of the revue theater called Chat Noir, and the neon lights. Singer was very animated, he pointed and showed her everything. He showed her the sea, or at least brought to her attention the smell of the sea; he showed her the slopes above the city, in particular Ekebergåsen, and it was as if he were saying the whole time that all this would be hers, it was here she would grow up and live her life.

  He tried to show her that Oslo was a magical city, since that was how it now appeared to him, having returned after several years’ absence. For that reason he took her to secret places, unexpected small stone stairways that connected various street levels. He showed her underpasses and hidden alleyways that were shortcuts allowing a person to save numerous meters by seeking it out and then slipping through. He showed her building courtyards that sometimes had small gardens. He showed her Oslo Harbor. On one Sunday they walked the entire length of the harbor, from Frognerstranda to Containerhavna in Bjørvika; it was a long walk that Isabella completed with an inscrutable look on her face. He showed her the east side of Oslo where all the foreign workers lived and where highly foreign-looking Asian women wearing silk clothing wandered around, and they visited the shops run by immigrants where Singer offered Isabella a chance to taste exotic fruits, which she did, saying they tasted good, although without asking for more.

  Several times they passed the places where Singer had previously lived or worked, but Singer didn’t say that’s where I lived, or that’s where I worked; he would cast an amazed glance at these places, whether it was the dilapidated buildings, the Gyldenløve Hotel, the printing plant for the newspaper Dagbladet, or for that matter the premises of the College of Library Science, and he was amazed because these places were now of so little importance to him, as if they’d never had anything to do with his life, and he found no reason to initiate Isabella into a life to which he personally felt so little connection. On the other hand, he did point out the beautiful entryway of the Deich­man Library — the massive stone staircase and the pillars — and the distinctive gray-green elegance of the building in faux classical style. He told her that this was where he worked. Isabella looked in the direction he was pointing but didn’t say a word. The library was open, and for a moment he wondered whether he should take his little stepdaughter inside so that she could see his workplace, but he decided not to. Instead, he pointed toward Regjeringskvartalet, the government section of town, but not really at the specific buildings, so as to emphasize in passing that it was from here that everyone living in Norway was governed; however, he didn’t want to conceal the fact that these buildings were the seats of power (as was the nearby courthouse on the other side of Regjeringskvartalet), and he did want to point out the sandblasted symbols on the facades, decorations or figures, which he told Isabella had been done by Picasso. That’s all he said. Just that name: Picasso. So she would remember it. So she would remember it, fixing the name in her memory all on her own, hopefully, as something she would think about when she lay in bed that night, thinking that she now lived in a city where the mightiest building facades had been decorated by a man with the mysterious name of Picasso. It was a Thursday afternoon, just before six p.m., outside the Regjeringskvartalet. They needed to think about going home. They hurried over to Stortorget where they caught the Ullevål Hageby tram at the stop outside the shopping mall of Glasmagasinet. The tram arrived, it was very crowded, but Singer and Isabella pushed their way on, and Singer held on to a strap with one hand, while with the other he held on to Isabella. Right next to him stood a man also holding on to a strap, and Singer recognized him. Singer gave Isabella a poke so that she’d notice the man. They got off at Bislet. Then Singer said:

  “Did you see who that was?”

  Isabella shook her head and looked down.

  “That was the weatherman,” said Singer solemnly.

  They walked up Pilestredet, heading toward Suhms gate. When they were back home in their apartment, Isabella was tired and pale, and she disappeared into her room where she played with her dollhouse, quietly and somberly. Singer sat down in the living room to think. About how his life would proceed in the future. About whether he was capable of going through with it. At 7:30 he turned on the TV to watch the daily news program. At the very end the weatherman showed up, and it was the same weatherman they’d seen holding on to a strap in the tram about two hours earlier. Singer called to Isabella, and she came running.

  “There he is,” said Singer. “Look! The weatherman! The man we just saw on the tram. And now there he is! On TV! Isn’t that strange?”

  Isabella looked at the TV.

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “That’s him.” Then she went back to her room to continue playing with her dollhouse.

  Isabella had started school, in the second grade at a big Oslo school filled with children she didn’t know. Every morning Singer and Isabella would leave the apartment and walk downstairs together and out to the sidewalk on Suhms gate, where they said goodbye to each other, and Isabella turned right and headed for the intersection on Kirkeveien while Singer turned left and headed for the Deich­man Library in the center of town. Singer usually turned around to watch her go, seeing her scurrying along Suhms gate, wearing her backpack, heading for the intersection on Kirkeveien, where she stopped along with all the other children en route to school who were waiting to be ushered across the busy Kirkeveien by the school’s own traffic patrol; then he would continue on his way, either for the tram stop near Bislet station on Pilestredet, or he’d allow himself the freedom to walk the whole long way to the Deich­man, usually via Bogstadveien. As a single parent, Singer worked only during regular business hours from nine to three, which, by the way, he’d also done during the last year in Not­odden. This meant that he returned home around four, and when he arrived back at the apartment, Isabella was always there. School had ended hours earlier, and she was usually in her room, either doing her homework or sitting in front of the dollhouse, quietly immersed in the miniature world it offered. That’s how it was, day after day. In the morning they would leave the apartment together; she walked along Suhms gate wearing her backpack, Singer turned and watched her go before he continued on his own way, and at the end of the workday, he would let himself into the apartment and there she would be, as always, in her room. Week after week.

  But one day she came to him and said that she’d been invited to the birthday party of one of her classmates on Saturday. Singer felt his heart leap, he was so relieved, but he said nothing, merely asked the name of the girl, the one who was going to have the birthday party, and where she lived. But that night, after Isabella had gone to bed, he looked through her nicer clothes, wondering what she should wear to the birthday party. Finally he took out a skirt and white blouse that he remembered her wearing once when she was supposed to dress up in Not­odden, and that’s what he decided on, after pondering whether she might look too nice, but he decided she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t stand out in any way if she wore that particular outfit, he thought. But there was a problem. The blouse needed to be ironed. Actually, it needed to be washed as well, because it was dirty, so he immediately put it in the washing machine and washed it at forty degrees Celsius. But he didn’t know how to iron. He’d never learned how, and he was reluctant to learn, because he regarded ironing as such a feminine activity that he had trouble picturing himself doing it. That’s why he preferred to wear clothing that didn’t need to be ironed, and if Isabella needed her clothes to be ironed, he had previously asked Isabella’s grandmother to do it. But he found a solution. The next day he put the blouse in his briefcase and took it with him, and on the way to the Deich­man he kept his eye out for a dry cleaner’s. He found one on Pilestredet, went inside, and asked whether they could iron the blouse for him. Even though they didn’t usually do that sort of thing unless they had also dry-cleaned the garment, they were willing to make an exception for him. Singer breathed a sigh of relief, and the following day Isabella was able to put on her newly ironed blouse and go to the birthday party. When she came home from the birthday party he asked her how it went.

  “Good,” said Isabella.

  And life continued on as before. Their new life in Oslo. Isabella was very attached to her dollhouse. The dollhouse had been a Christmas gift during the last year of her mother’s life. And it was fully equipped with furniture in every room, electric lights, a TV that glowed the way a TV glows in reality, lamps on the ceilings and on little tables, pictures on the walls, a fully equipped kitchen, a well-appointed bathroom, curtains, and beds with coverlets. It’s true that it hadn’t been fully furnished from the beginning; both Singer and others had gradually bought more furnishings so that today it was fully equipped, also with dolls of an appropriate size who lived inside in a nuclear family. Isabella could sit there for hours, moving these dolls in and out of the house, moving them from room to room, as she stared inside. Occasionally she would take one of the dolls out and place it somewhere else, in another room in Singer’s apartment, in the kitchen, for example, and then she’d go back to her room and sit there staring inside the dollhouse again; maybe she’d stick her hands inside to straighten the corner of a miniature curtain, or she’d make the people in the dollhouse move from one room to another, until, after a long time, she’d run into the living room or some other room in the apartment and get the doll she’d left there and put it back in the dollhouse, in one of the rooms. It might be any of the dolls that disappeared and then returned, but it seemed as if there was some sort of set configuration, as if there were certain rules and sequences for the way events were carried out inside that little head of hers, as she sat and stared inside the dollhouse, constantly sticking her hands inside for long periods of time, after she’d finished her homework.

  Several months had passed since they’d moved to Oslo, and Singer was very worried. Isabella never went outside to play, she never went over to a friend’s house, and even though she’d been invited to another birthday party, her daily little-girl life hadn’t changed. Now and then Singer had to fight an urge to follow her along Suhms gate in the morning, at a distance, and without being seen. He would have liked to stand on this side of the street and watch what transpired on the other side of Kirkeveien after all the children were ushered across by the school’s traffic patrol, to see whether she joined up with any other children for the rest of the walk to school, taking the path across the lot facing Marienlyst school — maybe with another schoolgirl, or at least walking with several others, a merry and carefree group — or whether she covered this last part of the route alone, and if so, constantly passing others who were walking together; because that’s how it is for some who walk alone, she would pass many others, not because she walked that much faster but because those who walked to school together often stopped to do something or other, whispering a secret, for example, and she would be walking behind them for one reason or other, albeit a specific reason; this person walking alone would pass many of these merry groups of girls, or configurations of two best friends, even though she wouldn’t be walking faster than they would in order to hurry to school, on the contrary. Often those walking alone — and Isabella might be one of them — walked slower than the others, more thoughtful, less carefree, but Singer never saw what transpired on the other side of Kirkeveien because he didn’t want to spy on his little, and possibly very lonely, stepdaughter.