“I want you to take everything I say seriously.”

“Fine. Then I may as well say that it opens up room for doubt. The words I know leave room for the possibility that a time, a period, a moment may arrive in which you actually no longer know. And you also imply the opposite—that the state of I don’t know exists. And the downgraded I believe. While my version, on the other hand—”

“Yes, let’s hear about your version, my beloved Magnus.”

“Three simple words, Signe. Three words that are a cliché. But also the truest, because I am not looking forward, or backward, or toward anything else but us.”

“But you.”

“What?”

“Anything else but you. You are not referring to anything but your own feelings,” I said.

“Fine,” he said.

“So you’re saying that I’m qualifying my feelings?”

“I’m saying that I love you.”

“Is that different from thinking it? You think you love me.”

“Right now, I think you wear me out.”

“Words. Are. Important.”

“Words. Are. Important. For. You.”

“I am going to be a journalist,” I said, smiling. “So you’ll have to learn how to live with it.”

“You weren’t planning to become a journalist when I chose you.”

“It was in the cards, though.”

“Maybe it was.”

“And by the way,” I said, “were you the one who chose me? Does the man choose the woman? The positive force choosing the negative? I always thought I was the one who chose you.”

“Dear de Beauvoir. I give up. You chose me.”

“Yes. I chose you.”

“Can we go to sleep now?”

“Yes. Good night,” I said.

“I love you,” he said.

When I get back from the store, the helicopters are silent, but another sound has taken over: the sound of loading. A guy wearing overalls is driving a forklift back and forth from the fish landing station to a small cargo ship in the harbor. Containers of ice are stacked on European pallets, he lowers them on board, the forklift moves with careless, sharp movements, and a solid banging sound can be heard when they strike the inside of the ship and disappear into the cargo hold.

Then there is silence. The forklift is parked beside the wall by the fish landing station and everyone leaves the harbor. Tomorrow the skipper will come, start the engine, take the ice, my ice, our ice, and transport it south—to other countries, to people who have never seen a glacier, never held snow between their hands—and there it will melt in glasses, in drinks, there it will be destroyed.

Magnus doesn’t need ice, he has his swimming pool and his plump wife, Trine. She was already around when they were engineering students, I remember. I wonder if he fell for her already there and then, maybe even before we broke up. No doubt he has grandchildren who come to visit, and wine tastings. He doesn’t need ice cubes, probably only drinks red wine—Bordeaux, Burgundy, Beaujolais, bubbling drops with a fruity hint of plum. But nonetheless he has signed off on this.