‘Combining a j-j-job, like the one I have in the church … with co-co-composing.’

As I didn’t respond, he carried on: ‘What can easily become … r-r-routine. With what should be your s-s-soul.’ After a moment’s reflection he added: ‘I have something to say, you see.’

‘And you say it with music, not words, as it says in the scriptures.’

‘Saint Reidar Thommesen? In the band leader’s firscht epischtle to the Oslo Theatercafe?’

‘Chapter two, verse three.’111

‘But tha’s akshelly what I do, Verg. Music can express so much where words have no power. That’s in the scriptures too.’

‘Most things have already been written and most tunes are plagiarism. Well disguised copies, the best of them, mind you. Yesterday was actually written by Schubert.’

‘Rubbish. It was Bach.’

‘Nevertheless, we still agree that…’

‘I say, as I always have,’ he interrupted. ‘On the first-of-May demos in those difficult days of yore I always assembled under the slogan: DON’T FORGET GERSHWIN!’ He glanced around furtively. ‘For some reason I always marched on my own.’

It had gone quiet around us. Conspicuously quiet. We looked around. The crowd was thinning out. The waitresses were emptying ashtrays.

But from the back room we could still hear the braying laughter of Paul Finckel, who was sitting at his regular table with a children’s writer on one side, an ex-footballer, now post-office employee on the other, and a varied assortment of ample bosoms opposite him.

‘Shall we go to a place called … the Hot Spot,’ I asked warily.

Jakob’s face lit up and he shook off his sudden ennui. ‘Absolutely! The Hot Spot. The hottest spot in town.’

As we stood up and strolled to the door, Paul Finckel stuck his head from around the partition, raised his glass and yelled: ‘Watch out for the sirens, boys. Watch out for the femmes fatales.’

112

15

It was well past midnight when we found ourselves outside the anonymous, four-storey-high so-called chimney house in the district between the bus station and the railway, which was concealing this week’s Hot Spot.

The December night licked at our faces with a cold tongue, and somewhere up the mountainside barking came from a lone kennel. Canned disco music throbbed against the closed windows on the first, second and third floors. Curtains were drawn to muffle the sound, and if we hadn’t known better we might have assumed this was a private party.

I gazed up at the grey façade. ‘Looks classy.’

Jakob stood beside me. The fresh air had done him good. ‘It’s relatively discreet. You won’t get in without the passes we were given yesterday, and they check you over.’

‘The question is whether I’ll get in.’

‘Yes, you will. Anyway, they move from week to week. The backers own three or four similar condemned properties around the town centre and they move the event from place to place. The whole business is nothing but a cunning way to get round licensing regulations…’

‘And an equally cunning way to pocket illegal earnings?’