Bergen surrounded Lille Lundgård lake and was reflected in its black water, the centre of which had acquired a film of grey ice. Along the western side was Bergen Art Gallery – containing the Stenersen collection – with its modernist façade, which adjoined the functionalist Kunstforening building – with Rasmus Meyer’s elegant collection of art and historical furniture – and there was also Bergen Electricity Board’s resplendent, Soviet-inspired homage to technology and progress. On the southern side was the library, like an authoritative mother keeping an eye on everything, and along the eastern side was one of the town’s oldest residential districts – the charming rooftop profile of Marken’s small higgledy-piggledy houses epitomised original Bergen, while Sparebank’s Steven Spielberg-style architecture testified to the 1980s capricious economic conditions, and the towering town hall block to local politicians’ abiding impotence: as out of place as a monument to Wagner at the Troldhaugen home of Edvard Grieg.31

We followed the footpaths around the lake, where the spring’s first sports event took place every year in wind and hail, and around which all the young families have trudged every 17^th May, fleeing the Independence Day celebrations’ hot dogs, half-melted ice creams, uninflatable balloons and cardboard horns that burst your eardrums, in search of distractions such as traditional small-dinghy sailing among the ducks and seagulls in the muddy water.

Now there were neither balloon vendors nor hot-dog customers anywhere in sight. Some distance away, under some bare trees stood a group of down-and-outs sharing a bottle, which was passed from hand to hand and mouth to mouth. We didn’t feel a lot better ourselves as we staggered along.

I said to Jakob: ‘Over there, on that wall, I walked – or rather teetered – with a girl from upper secondary, pretending we were in Paris and strolling alongside the Seine.’

He looked at me sceptically. ‘You must’ve had a vivid imagination.’

‘It was spring.’

‘Did you ever get there? To Paris, I mean.’

‘I did. The following summer. But not with her.’

‘Not with her,’ he repeated. He was descending into a bout of depression. I could see it in his eyes. ‘I also remember you standing somewhere by a lake, Varg, and it wasn’t the bloody Seine you were dreaming about.’

‘Oh, yeah? Where?’

‘In Nygård Park. Some girl had dumped you …’

‘That’s novel.’

‘And you were staring into the water, and for a moment I thought you were going to bloody jump.’

‘Weren’t there any other girls then? Ones that hadn’t dumped us, I mean. Yet?’32

‘Yes, there were.’

‘You see. And? Great act, don’t you think? That way you had a chance.’

He shook his head. ‘If you think so.’ Then he turned abruptly to me, grabbed my lapels and stared straight into my eyes. ‘So why did she leave me, then?’

‘She? Who?’

‘You know very well who I mean, Varg.’

‘Your … wife?’

‘YES!’ He shoved me away and stood staring darkly across the water. ‘My … wife.’

A duck was quacking in the lake. Perhaps it wanted to express its sympathy. Or perhaps it was telling us to keep quiet so that it could get some shut-eye.