“I’m serious. If you confront him he will keep on smiling and he will freeze you out, and he will do it so slowly and so imperceptibly that you won’t notice he’s done it.”

“Bastard, though.”

“Cal,” she said, “this is the knife in the table between you and Tvist. Cool your head. Show yourself willing. Cooperate. Then choose with great precision the moment when you reach for the knife. Because when you go for him you need to go hard.”

Nineteen

I pulled into a street that ran parallel to the fjord. Fancy area, expensive, though the September air was full of diesel and smoke. On the other side of a high fence a train yard blocked off the water. Elsa got out of the car and slammed the door. I opened the passenger window.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I wish you were coming to this thing at the kindergarten,” I said.

“Believe me, so do I. But they want fathers to bond with other fathers, so you know . . .”

“I already have my support group for that.”

“You know they’re not the same thing. This is for the kids.”

“Or you could shoot me now.”

She laughed. “I didn’t bring my gun. Go bond with some fathers.”

She watched me, smiling, as I drove off. In the rearview mirror I saw her turn toward her therapist’s office.

I drove around the corner, parked the car in the next street, switched off the engine.

Why was I lying, and about something as trivial as my support group?

For a while in August I had gone along to the meetings, but I was unable to follow because the Norwegian they spoke was nothing like the Norwegian I was learning. I would sit for whole hours absorbing the feeling of other people’s grief, trying to guess what they were saying. I never dared speak myself. I was a foreigner here. It felt crass to ask people to translate their suffering into my language. I quickly found reasons not to go.

Awake in his car seat, Franklin kicked his legs, energetic, smiling. I leaned toward him through the gap in the seats, brought my face very close to his.

“D,” said Franklin. “D.”

“Yeah,” I said. “D. Daaaad. Dad.”

“D.”

“Oh, Franklin, buddy. My beautiful boy . . .”

“Mm . . .” said Franklin, pointing.

And there, suddenly, was Elsa, walking briskly along the other side of the road, away from her therapist’s, her trench coat buttoned tight across her chest. I watched her, ready to open the door, but she did not see the car. She passed by on the other side, stood outside a bar, looked about her, then ducked her head and entered through the low door.

“M,” said Franklin. “M-mmm.” He had seen Elsa as she passed.