When he woke up the day after he’d been Adam Eyde’s guest at Hydro’s enormous villa in Not­odden, he didn’t give it a thought, that was already an event he’d left behind in a dreamlike glow. The only thing on his mind was that today he would present himself at his new workplace at the Not­odden library. He was about to begin his job as librarian in Not­odden. He quickly got dressed, wolfed down his breakfast, and rushed off to the library, which wasn’t far from the hotel. He introduced himself to the head librarian and the rest of the staff. And that was the start of his new life. He moved to a neighborhood, the so-called Tinnbyen area, where he rented a studio apartment in the basement of a home belonging to an upper-level municipal official, and every day he would walk to his job in the center of town, though at different times of day, since his work hours varied; it was a shift schedule, requiring him to take either a morning or an afternoon shift. Singer quickly became immersed in his work at the library, just as he had expected and hoped. He’d come to Not­odden to live incognito. Using his full name, of course, but hiding from the thirty-four years that had clung to him, comprising the life he’d lived so far. He’d put all those years behind him and had no desire to revisit them, and that was why he’d started on his belated training to become a librarian, a three-year course of study at the College of Library Science, where, in addition to the formal training, he had also taught himself how to make anonymous the life for which he felt such a thirst. A new life, a new future, that was what he looked forward to. He’d always been fascinated by the possibility of disappearing. To start fresh, in an unfamiliar town, where no one knew him and had no idea where they stood with him.

  It wasn’t long before Singer adapted to the daily routine at the library in Not­odden. It’s true that the head of the library, a somewhat older woman, and a couple of the other employees did regard him with a certain suspicion initially, because he was a relatively young man, and so they assumed he was an up-and-coming type who consequently would try to interfere with all the arrangements that had been made, and which they thought he would deem, if not outright old-fashioned, at the very least insufficient, and in need of updating. But gradually they realized that this was far from Singer’s intention, that he hadn’t come to Not­odden to start his career within the library field but instead to do a basic job well while drawing as little attention to himself as possible. Since he also turned out to be friendly toward everyone, and sarcastic about the boss when she wasn’t around, he was well liked by everyone, even the boss; at least that’s what he thought, or assumed to be so.

  It was astonishing how quickly Singer felt at home in Not­odden. The library work — including cataloging, classifying, and other internal duties, as well as dealing with the public at the counter, where he received books brought back by the patrons and stamped the new books they borrowed — proceeded without any trouble whatsoever. He quickly settled in, and he liked seeing himself in this situation; in fact, he enjoyed it. Routine work, conscientiously performed, was something he’d always liked. The meticulousness, the feeling of being present in purely routine operations fascinated him, and that’s when he felt more in tune with himself than he normally felt or had reason to feel. It was the unthinking, purely automatic nature of sticking to what was routine in a situation, the near absentmindedness of it, that could bring out the jesting, almost amiable side of him as he stood behind the counter in the Not­odden municipal library. He might cheerfully joke with the book borrowers, sounding witty, in fact immeasurably witty, so that the book borrowers simply had to surrender whenever he enthusiastically proffered his witticisms, which simply poured out of him, requiring no thought on his part. Or he might frown in what appeared to be the deepest concentration when book borrowers, now and then, asked for his advice if they wanted to research a certain topic, or if they asked him for the name of a book they were looking for, though they couldn’t recall the author’s name or the title, but it contained a very specific scene, which, as it turned out, had become distorted in their memory, something Singer found out after asking enough questions to be able to determine that there was only one book it could be; and what joy he felt when he turned out to be right, a joy he felt especially because the book borrower was so happy that they’d found the book after all, because it was this book he, or she, had in mind even though he, or she, had been so badly mistaken, according to the book borrower him- or herself, when it came to remembering the scene he or she had presumably remembered so well; the scene was actually not like that at all, but like this, as presented here, which he, or she, realized now that Singer had practically conjured forth the book for him, or her.

  And so that was how the days passed in Not­odden. He lived a simple, well-ordered life. He familiarized himself with the town and adapted to his new routines. He found a certain café where he ate his daily dinner, found his way to the route he should take to and from his job, subscribed to Teledølen, the local newspaper, even though he could have made do with plowing through the paper at work; he looked for and found an alternative route he could take to and from work, for a change of pace, and he frequently went to the movies. He preferred to do this after finishing the so-called afternoon shift at the library, because when he was done with his work for the day, after he’d made everything ready for the following day’s morning shift and was able to close up, then he had just enough time to slip into the last showing, just before the movie started. Once he didn’t get in because it was sold out. It was a very popular and much-touted American film, so tickets had been in high demand. After that, he made it a habit to look in Teledølen to see what movie was playing at the theater in the evening, and then he would assess whether it was a movie that might sell out. If he thought it might, he would leave the library for a few minutes to go over to the movie theater to buy a ticket in advance. Subsequently, he was never again stopped at the door because the show was sold out. Yet this led him to wonder whether he might have set the standard a bit too high, causing him, too often, to assess films as being so popular that they would sell out even if they didn’t even approach that level of popularity, so that the women who worked in the ticket booth of the Not­odden movie theater might find it strange that he constantly came over to buy his ticket for the last showing even though there was no reason whatsoever to assure his place in that manner; on the contrary. And for that reason he decided to take certain chances, as he phrased it, by purchasing a ticket in advance only to the obviously top films, those that everyone was talking about, those that were mentioned in all the Oslo newspapers, with big movie stars in the lead roles, and there weren’t very many of those. In fact, there were so few of those types of movies that he eventually stopped leaving his job during work hours to buy a ticket in advance for the last showing, but he did not stop looking in Teledølen to see whether a really big film was going to be shown in the evening. And if that was the case, then he made sure to buy a ticket in advance.

  So, that was how Singer’s life in Not­odden had begun to take shape. It was a new life, yet everything had begun to fall into patterns, a specific rhythm, which was what he sought and also felt fairly certain he had found. He was content. He was in hiding, and yet he had a great deal of freedom of movement. Singer in Not­odden. Fresh air and wind. He took his walks to and from work, alternating between the two routes, which were, in fact, identical for large stretches of the way. But he also did a lot of walking in his spare time, strolling along the streets in town, and also in surrounding areas, and out in nature, for instance up near old Tinnfoss, near the dams, or along the ridges above the town, or on the flat stretches out toward the Heddal stave church, a long and intrinsically pointless Sunday hike, but with a sensible goal in mind. He wandered around, listening to the town’s metaphysics, as they’d said at the College of Library Science. Trying to absorb the smell and dust from the three-story brick buildings in the center of Not­odden, juxtaposing this with the shop windows and advertising signs of the 1980s. He had a sense of the time in which he was living, here in this town. He enjoyed himself. In mid-August he could now and then catch the first whiff of autumn in the air, a slight trace of chill in the mild breezes, and Singer found himself thinking that he was looking forward to the fall, to the brittle creaking of ice early in the morning on Lake Heddal and on the Tinn River, which ran through town, looking forward to the frost and the leaves falling from the trees; and when this happened, he thought to himself: autumn has arrived, and I’ve been looking forward to it, and he sensed it in his nostrils and took a deep breath of the chill autumn air, that raw current of Telemark in the air, here in the middle of Not­odden.

  He would eat lunch at specific times, either right before he had to start the afternoon shift, or right after the morning shift. That came naturally, since the café where he ate wasn’t a restaurant but a simple café that closed at six p.m. If he wished to have dinner after the library had closed for the evening, he had to find somewhere else to eat. But he never did that; he’d found this café, and that’s where he ate every day, except on Sunday, when the place was closed. Always alone, but not always at the same table. He hadn’t selected a specific table that he called his own, he chose a seat at random, and that could be anywhere, depending on where the other café guests were seated. If on rare occasion the place was full, then he would pause, holding his tray in his hands, and scan the room, then go over to a table occupied by a solitary man, or woman, but preferably a man, and ask if the other chair was occupied, and if not, would it be all right if he sat down. One time, as it happened, a colleague from the library came in as he was sitting alone at a table, eating his food. This person, a woman, sat down at his table. She was only having a cup of coffee, and while she sat there, she invited him to a party on Saturday. At her home, hers and her husband’s. Singer immediately accepted, trying also to give the impression that he was grateful to be invited to a party at the home of his colleague; he thought he owed her that much, because she no doubt thought he probably didn’t yet know many people here in Not­odden, and that was why she’d thought of him when she was arranging the party. She certainly didn’t need to do that. Singer wouldn’t have been offended, or hurt, if afterward he’d heard that she and her husband had given a party and he wasn’t invited, even though other colleagues had been. If all his colleagues had attended, then of course it would have been a different matter, but she hadn’t invited all of his colleagues. There was actually only one other librarian present, aside from the hostess and Singer.

  Most of the other guests, both male and female, worked at the teachers college. But also present was a young lawyer, who had settled in Not­odden to set up his own practice. He was married to an artisan who made pottery and was now looking for suitable premises for a ceramics workshop. Much of the evening was spent trying to suggest possible locations that she, the lawyer’s wife, might want to take a closer look at. That may have been a little too much local color for Singer’s taste, since he wasn’t yet very familiar with the town and its premises, but he enjoyed himself and made use of the opportunity to ask about the address each time certain properties were mentioned if he didn’t already know where they were located. In this way he became more familiar with the town, in a very local fashion, as he internally memorized the names of the properties where such and such premises were located, names that were frequently not official names but the ones used by locals, names he wanted to learn now that he’d moved here to put down roots.

  Singer enjoyed himself at the party given by his colleague and her husband. In general he handled himself well in social settings, it was just a matter of taking a few simple precautions and then maneuvering from there. For instance, never take the innermost seat in a room, because, if you needed to get up, you could do so only by causing a great deal of trouble for the other guests, who would often have to move their knees and contort their bodies, even on certain occasions get to their feet and move aside so that you could slip past. Of course, this applies only if you’re new to the group; if you’re part of a group where you know everyone, or at least most of the other guests, beforehand, then it’s not so important. Because then you’ve been incorporated into a form of routine self-regulation among friends, which means that it’s not so important if N or B has to move his or her knees or contort his or her body to allow you to slip past. But that is not the case when you’re with a completely new group of people. Then your body, your own sphere, is noticed in an entirely different way. The greediness of the other guests toward you personally is all too palpable if, in such a situation, you have to get up and maneuver your way past them, causing them to twist and turn, and therefore pay careful attention to this man, Singer, who, tall as he is, has stood up and made his way past.

  For that reason Singer chose his place with care on such occasions, when he had the opportunity to do so. If he didn’t have the opportunity, but instead had to take the innermost seat in the room, either because he was specifically assigned to that seat or he ended up there by accident, he would stay seated all evening, without showing any sign of what was going on inside him. Yes, Singer had mastered the social life, it was no trouble for him to take part; in fact, now and then he even looked forward to the idea that on Saturday he was going to a party, just as on that evening in Not­odden when he was invited to the home of a colleague and her husband, which had gone exceptionally well.

  His social life was actually looking pretty good. Pleasant parties on the weekend, and a good relationship with his colleagues, including his boss, on weekdays. The people he had the most difficult time interacting with were actually the library patrons, or at least some of them. Those who, after he’d helped them once in a witty or most obliging manner, came back and made it known to him, either through gestures or even through direct remarks, that he, or she, was practically on a first-name basis with Singer. He didn’t like that, and he would behave quite stiffly. It wasn’t because the book borrowers recognized him that he felt the need to retreat into formality. That was quite nice, and he liked being recognized, since, after all, he’d tried his utmost for them, either with his jokes or his willingness to help; he appreciated the fact that they at least showed that they recognized him. But what he didn’t like was being recognized with the expectation that he should display a specific quality, in this case either that he was witty or that he was self-effacingly eager to be of service. Even if, in his blessedly routine work, he might greet them with an absentminded joke on one occasion, that did not give them the right to conclude that he was one of their witty acquaintances, or one of their extremely obliging acquaintances, who now came rushing over, so self-effacing, to be at their beck and call in terms of everything a library patron might require of books from the Not­odden library’s abundant shelves and secret chambers in the basement. At times his stomach would knot when book borrowers came over to the counter, carrying books they wanted to take out, and they would speak to him with an overly familiar and cheerful tone, offering some so-called clever remarks that personally amused them greatly, and then look at him expectantly, waiting to hear his response. The connection between these ever so stupid, asinine jokes and the expectant look accompanying them seemed to him a terrible intimacy that he hadn’t invited, and he refused for all the world to get roped into it. And if anyone thought that it was only men who excelled at saying stupid, asinine jokes accompanied by expectant looks, rest assured that Singer would disagree. It was just as likely to be women, both young and middle-aged, who might assume that same attitude with regard to the new librarian at the Not­odden library. But in such circumstances, Singer did manage to defend himself. He, whom they regarded as a witty man, the cheerful knight of stupid jokes, would not respond to their advances; instead his manner would be reserved, correct, and distant. The situation was worse with those who thought they saw in him someone who was an extremely obliging and devoted gentleman. He couldn’t react in a dismissive way with such people; instead he was forced to play the role they seemed to perceive as his. There were two library patrons, in particular, who individually had decided that Singer was so amiable and so knowledgeable and so unselfishly devoted, that they simply refused to allow any other librarian to help them if he happened to be present in the library. One was a middle-aged woman who was a voracious reader of novels; the other was an elderly gentleman who was keenly interested in history. Singer had helped each of them, on separate occasions, extract themselves from the labyrinthine warrens into which they’d wandered because of mix-ups and misremembered details, and led them to the books they were so eager to find, since they could no longer recall where to find them in all the bookcases made available, at no charge, to book borrowers in the Not­odden library. Hence Singer was able to step forward and help the middle-aged woman away from the M shelves where she was desperately looking among novels by Somerset Maugham, trying to find the characters she knew she wanted to find, and he resolutely led her over to the letter G, where, under the name of John Galsworthy, she found the first novel in The Forsyte Saga, which was what she was actually looking for; not necessarily a brilliant display of librarianship on Singer’s part, but the middle-aged woman was so impressed and grateful that from then on she refused help from anyone but Singer. This was also the case with the elderly gentleman who had gotten lost in an impossible scenario, which he fully understood was impossible, but he couldn’t find a way out because he wasn’t aware that Bavaria was the Latin name for what is called Bayern in Norwegian, and instead he’d mistaken it for Batavia, the Dutch colonial capital in the East Indies, and in this way he’d ended up in a state of complete bewilderment, confusing the Kingdom of Bavaria, with its mountains and King Ludwig’s fairy-tale castle, with East Indian frigates on their way across the oceans of the world in the first half of the nineteenth century. With a simple intervention Singer was able to free the elderly gentleman interested in history from his books about the Dutch naval vessels and put into his hands what he was actually looking for, a biography of mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, a gesture that greatly touched the elderly gentleman. And from then on he too refused help from anyone other than Singer. Singer found this annoying. He found it uncomfortable to be subjected to their appreciative attention. Especially because it occurred in the presence of his colleagues. He couldn’t find any way to avoid attention except by getting his colleagues to side with him and against the middle-aged woman and the elderly gentleman. He openly acknowledged to his colleagues that he found the attention of these book borrowers quite annoying, and that he was trying to avoid them. He made a point of trying to slip away whenever they arrived, retreating to some remote bookcase, preferably in the very back of the library, and subsequently playing a form of hide-and-seek with them until, at last, unseen by the middle-aged woman or the elderly gentleman, he was able to escape from the book-borrowing area and go into the office on the other side of the corridor. This prompted amused approval from his colleagues, and they started warning him. “Karlsen just came in,” they might whisper, or “Barbro Tuven is here,” so that he’d have time to retreat to safety, by either hiding in the office or going down to the basement where he always had some odd jobs to do, since that was where the library’s true treasures were kept. In this way he demonstrated to his colleagues that he had a far better and much more relaxed relationship with them than with the book borrowers who had presumed they knew him and had attached a specific and praiseworthy quality to his dubious person.