Like Noah in my very private ark I drifted into the dark waters of the final hours of the night, my sights set on nothing but sleep, and it was late morning before I sent out a dove to search for land.

62

9

There are days when coffee tastes like fresh rolls straight from the bakery. And there are days when it tastes like bitter almonds. It is almost the death of you. This was such a day. And the bread didn’t taste very fresh, either.

The kitchen was long and narrow and looked out onto the back yard. However, the interior was modern enough and we ate at an oil-treated pine table that slid out from under the worktop.

Jakob looked pale and unkempt and he had some butter smeared on one cheek. He also had some trouble getting food down.

There was a black portable radio on the worktop. A local writer was choosing songs. They played ‘Yesterday’. He was that kind of writer.

‘What did they die of?’ I asked, poking a hole in the butter.

He eyed me in bewilderment. ‘Who? Only Lennon’s died.’

‘I was thinking about Arild Hjellestad and Harry Kløve.’

He didn’t answer, but indicated that his mouth was full. Then he made a grab for a glass of milk to help the food down. But he misjudged the distance, knocked over the glass and the milk made a pool like Lake Mjøsa across the table.

‘You could’ve continued as a duo, you and Johnny.’

He swallowed, fetched a cloth and wiped up the milk. ‘And what would we have performed? Songs our mummies sang to us?’

‘Great idea. Now what did they die of?’63

His mouth twitched. ‘The … pretty typical causes of those days, I’m afraid. Harry died in a traffic accident. Arild drank himself to death.’

‘When did that happen?’

‘Their deaths? Well … Harry, last year, and Arild … January this year. He was found lying in the snow. He’d fallen asleep when he was drunk.’

‘And Harry?’

‘A bus knocked him down on a zebra crossing last autumn. He stepped out when the pedestrian lights were red, so the bus driver had no chance. It was in the papers.’

‘Did you have any contact with them? I mean, after you split up?’

‘Not much. We talked when we ran into one another, but that wasn’t often. Harry lived with his mother until she was moved to a care home a couple of years ago. He worked at the same ironmonger’s as he always had. In the storeroom. Arild, on the other hand, went off the rails. He worked for a while in a music shop, wrote for newspapers – he’d been to university, as you probably remember. Went from girl to girl, like in the old days, and partied hard. At the end there were fewer girls and more bottles, it seemed to me. When I bumped into him in the street he always tried to bum money off me.’ He stared down into his half-full glass of milk. ‘Eventually I learned to avoid him.’