Singer in Not­odden. In the process of living his life, and still with certain expectations in his blood. For Singer, a library was layer upon layer of stored materials, dusty books. The library was a labyrinth, and the cataloging system was a way of relating to the labyrinth. Being able to master it was a great pleasure for him. Dusty books, each in its place within the labyrinth, and whoever knew the code could simply go down to the basement and find the most precious of treasures. The fact that Singer had ultimately decided to become a librarian was partly because he was attracted to the notion of being a guardian of the books. That was how he liked to picture himself. And so his deepest, in fact his most satisfying, affiliation with the profession he’d chosen was of a metaphorical nature. Guardian of the books. He found traces of this notion in reality in the library’s basement, where the discarded, dusty, and forgotten books were stored. Unfashionable curiosities were stowed away and cataloged on shelf after shelf made of steel posts and sheets of aluminum.

  Upstairs, in the circulation department and in the reading room, the metaphors and ideas of social democracy reigned. Yet Singer’s strongest connection was to the dusty, yellowing books in the basement; in the real world upstairs it was one of his basic duties to keep the books dust-free. Books were not supposed to smell of dust, you should be able to open them, and fresh air should pour out from the pages. There was also the constant airing out of the Not­odden library! At least once an hour a vigorous airing out would occur, which was good for both people and books; now and then it was Singer who did the airing out, although only rarely, because there were plenty of others who were happy to throw open the windows. He found himself in a strictly social-democratic institution, and it was in the clean air of the place that he spent his days, dutifully and self-effacingly tending to his job. The truth was that he was never the one who did the airing out, but since there were plenty of others who thought about doing it, and then actually did it, his colleagues assumed that he, as a matter of course, also did it. In a sense he was prevented from doing so because of his own metaphorical attachment to what it meant to be a librarian. But otherwise he fit in beautifully with the social-democratic landscape in which he found himself. The interior was welcoming, practical, and free of dust. Not a single dust mote could be found on the light-colored wood, on the armrests of the chairs or on the chair seats, nor on the tabletops, which were made of the exact same light-colored wood. The library was bursting with health. In a social-democratic way they had united reading with health. This was instantly noticeable when you entered this temple of reading. A thirst for knowledge is healthy. That it’s necessary has been known for a long time, but it’s also healthy. A good book is good for the heart! (thought Singer). Actually, they found themselves in a solarium. Books are sunshine for the mind. The circulation department and the reading room looked more like a tanning salon than a library, at least in the way the library had been preserved in Singer’s metaphorical consciousness. Singer’s task, he thought, was to provide a brain massage for the middle-aged women and elderly men. Plus direct the artificial sun of reading toward the younger generations who came to gather material for their so-called special projects, which seldom had anything particularly special about them, as far as Singer could tell. So, these were the sorts of thoughts that might occur to Singer, thoughts that he might also mention, in jest, to his colleagues. Because of this, his colleagues regarded him as a radical, and for this reason those who were radicals themselves thought they had found an ally in him. But they hadn’t. He was just joking. Whenever the conversation turned to politics, he would quickly withdraw into himself. He didn’t participate in the big social-democratic debate about how the library system should adapt to the new times. It was well known that social-democratic modernization began in the library. First the Library was modernized, then Society, and finally the whole Party. As early as 1983, libraries in Norway were modernized. As early as 1983, when Singer arrived here, it was common practice at Not­odden library to place smokers at the bottom of the waiting list for the most popular books. Tobacco and books do not go together, cigarette smoke damages book pages, and therefore it’s preferable to loan popular books to nonsmokers. Then the books will last longer, and more people will be able to enjoy them. Smoke settles not only in wallpaper, but also in the letters of the alphabet, creating a bad smell. In the Not­odden library, they were all social democrats, including Singer. Yes, Singer pretended to be a social democrat, it was to his advantage to do so because then he was left in peace and could sink into himself when the others discussed politics.

  Singer wasn’t especially interested in politics, but he tried to hide this as best he could. He kept up with politics, but it was mostly a kind of game for him. He might vote in an election, but it was mostly so he could follow along on election night, happy when his party did well and disappointed when things went badly. He never watched campaign debates, only the TV news broadcasts on election night, and he would go to bed when the party leaders arrived at the studios of the Norwegian Broadcasting System to analyze the election. But before that moment, he was actually keenly focused on the election results, tensely following the reports from the smallest of towns and the most distant of counties, and keenly following the shifting prognoses regarding the distribution of parliamentary seats by party. He had never considered getting involved in politics, the thought had never even occurred to him, he wouldn’t even have bothered to laugh if anyone had asked him whether he’d consider getting involved in a political issue. Politics did not concern him. He discussed politics with friends and acquaintances, and his colleagues as well, and they probably weren’t aware of his indifference, because occasionally, in spite of everything, he might display a great involvement in the form of sarcastic remarks and counterarguments. If his friends and acquaintances or colleagues had analyzed his involvement, they would have noticed that they never heard Singer express admiration for any politician or for any political view. His involvement was expressed only in remarks about the banalities and phoniness of politicians. That was what provoked his opposition. He especially reacted whenever politicians were illogical, meaning when they supported or opposed an issue which they, if they had followed their basic premises or fundamental political views, could not have supported or opposed. Then Singer would laugh, and he was merciless in his mockery of such humbug. He could understand why politics were important, because they had to do with how society should be governed, and that was certainly important, because he had no doubt that society shapes all of us. But he couldn’t see that it had anything to do with him. Societal consequences just didn’t reach deep inside him. Yet even if they did so, on rare occasion, he would still take an indifferent stance toward them.

  Singer had a similar attitude toward history. He was fully aware that the human being is a historical creature, but he still couldn’t see what that had to do with him, in any fundamental way. This may seem like a rather peculiar viewpoint, because, unlike politics, Singer was keenly interested in history. He’d always read a lot about history, and he’d also thought along historical lines whenever he tried to understand a certain phenomenon having to do with the human condition. But he wasn’t able to put himself in a historical context. He couldn’t see his own life as a historical example. The truth was that he was neither a societal nor a historical example. Or symptom, if you will. He was not a societal symptom, nor a historical symptom. And by that he meant not only that he reacted against being a societal subject, or a historical subject, but he also had a great dislike of thinking of himself as such. He’d given this a lot of thought. And his conclusion was and would continue to be that even though it might seem quite self-contradictory when he denied the objective reality he attributed to everyone else, both in the present and in the past, he continued to hold on to this view because the subjective indifference with which he regarded the fact that he, from an objective viewpoint, was also a creature of society, was so all-encompassing that it robbed him of the joy of any objective attachment to anything outside himself. If objective realities existed, they were nevertheless not strong enough to touch him in any way.

  Singer thrived in Not­odden, and in his new job. He had what he called a calm, good life, possessed of a certain rhythm, meaning regularity. In September, Inge­mann, who was his childhood pal and still his best friend, arrived for a visit. At the time Inge­mann was employed by the Riksteatret, a Norwegian touring theater company, with a role in a play, quite a funny comedy, that was making a guest appearance in Not­odden. Before the performance, Inge­mann visited Singer, and after the performance they met at the Telemark Hotel, first in the restaurant, and then the two of them sat and talked in Inge­mann’s room until far into the night. Singer was a little worried about Inge­mann, who had turned thirty-four, like Singer himself; he had to make do with minor roles instead of lead roles with the rather antiquated Riksteatret. He even tried to broach the subject with his friend, but Inge­mann merely laughed and said that Singer didn’t know the art of acting or the professional ethics of genuine actors. Half in jest, Inge­mann donned his costume for the evening’s performance, which he kept in a suitcase, and intoned Hamlet’s famed monologue for his friend. Even though Singer felt a little uncomfortable, he did think this scene, meaning the scene of Singer and Inge­mann in a hotel room in Not­odden, was captivating. Afterward he said his goodbyes to Inge­mann, walked home, and climbed into his own bed in the basement studio apartment that he’d rented from an upper-level municipal official in Not­odden.

  Two days later it happened. Singer fell in love. In late September, after he’d been in Not­odden for barely two months, on an evening just before closing time, two women came into the library and practically made fun of him. Perhaps not him personally, but they came in and were joking around, obviously aware of his presence as he stood behind the counter and accepted the books that were being returned and stamped the books that were being checked out. He knew one of the women from before; she was the lawyer’s wife, the artisan who had monopolized an entire dinner party hosted by Singer’s female colleague and her husband as they all suggested suitable premises for her ceramics workshop. He didn’t know the other woman, but she was clearly friends with the lawyer’s wife, and like the lawyer’s wife, she was about thirty, or twenty-eight to be precise. Both women were in high spirits, laughing and talking to each other more loudly than was customary in a library, where, by long tradition, peace and quiet are supposed to reign because, in spite of the fact that the 1980s were far more cheerful and freer in social interactions than in previous decades of our century, this freer style had not slipped into our libraries — in this particular area, but not in other areas, the libraries have preserved a somewhat old-fashioned tone, which seems to be ineradicable. So the two women were breaking with the library’s ineradicable old-fashionedness, which made them seem younger and freer, meaning bolder, than they actually were. Singer wondered whether they’d been drinking wine. They took a book from one of the bookcases that stood slightly to the right of the counter where Singer was standing, and they put their heads together to study the book, turning a few pages and pointing as they tittered like little girls. Singer happened to know full well what sort of books were in that bookcase; they were books about the local history of Telemark, a subject that, as far as Singer knew, provided no basis for that sort of merriment, in any way whatsoever. And so this girlish giggling surprised him, it made him a little uncomfortable. While they were carrying on in that manner, the lawyer’s wife cast a glance at Singer, met his eye, and greeted him, without any sort of girlish gesture or giggling at that moment, giving a brief, friendly nod of her head. Singer returned the greeting. Then the two women put their heads together again and continued on as before, unaffected. After a while they apparently tired of the book and stuck it back on the shelf, then moved away, treading lightly as they headed farther into the library, out of Singer’s view, just as he was out of their view, yet Singer had to suppress an urge to rush immediately over to the bookcase they had left to see which book they had been looking at, enjoying themselves in such a girlish way. There were few book borrowers in the library that evening, only two or three people, and one of them came over to Singer carrying a whole stack of books, which Singer would now have to check out by stamping them as well as the man’s library card. That’s when he heard the two women making a racket behind his back. Behind him was a wall partition, and on the other side of the partition was a bookcase that held the library’s books on psychology and the science of religion. Again he heard them making fun of something they’d found on the shelf, and now it wasn’t girlish giggling but pure laughter, pure female laughter, the laughter of one of them sounding a little darker than the other’s, which was thinner, like a jet of cool water.

  A little later he saw them again as they passed him on their way to the library reading room, where the newspapers and magazines were on display. There they sat down, each of them taking a newspaper, he noticed, before they reemerged and came over to the counter, where Singer was standing. The lawyer’s wife spoke to him, saying how much she’d enjoyed the party, and then: “So, this is where you work,” as if it was a big surprise to find a librarian working in a library. And maybe that thought occurred to her, because she suddenly began to laugh, and then the other woman laughed too, and even Singer found his eyes blinking merrily behind his glasses at the thought that it was certainly surprising to run into a librarian in a library.

  “Well, we’re not going to borrow any books,” she said then, throwing out her hands. “We just dropped in because it’s so cold outside. We’re going to the movies,” she told him. “We had some wine in the café, and we finished long before the movie is supposed to start, and if we’d had another glass, we would have been a little too tipsy, so that’s why we came over here instead. And there you stood,” she said, giving him a merry look.

  Singer gave her an equally merry look, and as he did so, he noticed the other woman staring at him. She stood a few steps behind the lawyer’s wife, looking straight at him. An odd gaze. Direct, calm, and she didn’t look down or away when she noticed that Singer saw that she was looking at him.

  They left. There were still two people in the library. He announced that the library was about to close, and they brought their books over so he could stamp them. Then he closed up and headed straight for the movie theater, as he’d done so many times before, and slipped inside right before the film started. It was dark inside the theater, but after his eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, he began looking around the theater’s sparsely occupied darkness to see where the two women were sitting. He wasn’t able to find them, though he guessed where they were sitting, but when the lights came on, it turned out he’d guessed wrong. So he rushed out to the lobby, where he paused to look around as he tentatively peered at the other moviegoers who streamed through the lobby and out to the street. That’s when he saw them, and they immediately saw him.

  “So you were going to the movies, too?” said the lawyer’s wife.

  Normally Singer would have felt uncomfortable about such a remark, which in a sense might be interpreted as exposing all-too-obvious motives and hopes; Singer was, after all, a man well into his thirties, but this time he didn’t care. He simply said yes, and a moment later he heard himself asking, quite affably, whether it might be the right time to drink the bottle of wine they had refrained from drinking before the show. So together they went over to a popular new restaurant, a little farther away, called Bistro. That was how he made the acquaintance of Merete Sæthre, the friend of the lawyer’s wife and a woman whom he had already begun to glorify, and for a long time would continue to do so.

  Can a man like Singer fall in love? Yes, he can. But can he, under the influence of this love, move in with the one he adores in order to sleep with her and eat at her table, which they will now share? Yes, he can. That’s what Singer did, though it was hardly advisable, and you might ask how it’s possible for a man like Singer to get involved in this type of merciless intimacy, which requires that he stand there, naked, erect with a naked body, which concealed nothing, in front of a naked woman flaunting herself before him.