I step out from behind the shelf. Not saying hello would be foolish, and maybe they know something about the glacier, maybe they actually care. But a name and a flood of words causes me to stop.

Magnus.

They’ve started talking about him, and one of them turns out to be his sister-in-law. He has moved to France, she says with obvious envy. He only comes home for board meetings, he’s apparently not planning to step down as chairman of the Ringfallene Company yet. He loves that job, but is otherwise enjoying his retirement down there, playing golf and attending wine-tasting events. It is apparently wonderful—she actually uses that word, wonderful. I stay put behind the shelf.

Wonderful. Yes indeed, I can imagine. I saw him once a few years back, from across the street in Bergen. I’m sure he was on his way to a meeting—he was wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase and an overcoat, the standard uniform of Norwegian adult businessmen. He didn’t see me, but I had time to study him. A life of plenty had made a visible impact on him: the biggest part of his body was his stomach. He had turned out like many others from our generation—an upholstered body in an upholstered existence, in our wonderful new world.

I wait until they have finished chatting, wondering whether they will say anything more about him. But now they seem to be talking about their own grandchildren, trying covertly to outdo one another with stories of these young people’s achievements, and the closeness of their bond, how often they see them, and not least how much their adult children rely on them, the grandmothers, to keep the wheels of daily life turning smoothly. And they don’t stop. One can apparently talk about grandchildren indefinitely. I sneak away from my basket, toward the door, opening it carefully, so the bell won’t make too much noise.

“I know that I love you,” I used to say.

“I love you,” Magnus used to reply.

“Is the word love an absolute or does it have degrees?” I asked once.

We were lying close together in bed, as our heartbeats slowly normalized. I think we were at his place—we usually were.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Are there degrees of love or is the word itself so strong that it’s always absolute, always one hundred percent?”

“You are at any rate the only person who can turn language’s most emotional word into something theoretical,” he said, smiling, while stroking my arm.

“But if there are degrees,” I said, “wouldn’t the verb know make it stronger? Isn’t my sentence actually stronger than yours, when I say that I know I love you?”

“You mean that you love me more than I love you?”

“Yes. I think maybe that’s true,” I replied, snuggling up against him even closer.

“I don’t believe that.”

“Know. It adds a certainty to the expression that makes it stronger.”

“You want me to take this seriously?”