Broken Read Free Page A

I say with absolute conviction.
    “Alvar Eide,” he says quietly. “That’s good. I’m very grateful.”
    He straightens his back and smiles.
    “So you’ll be starting tomorrow?”
    I rest against the headboard and shrug with resignation. Never in all my life have I experienced anything like this.
    “Because now that I am visible to you, you won’t be able to wait. I’ll have a word with the woman holding the dead child. I’m sure we can come to an understanding.”
    “Well, if you’ve been reassured now, would you kindly leave and find your place in the line? I need some sleep. It’s very late now.”
    “Yes!” He nods adamantly. His gray eyes have lit up. “There’s just one small thing.” He raises his hand; he is begging. “Am I a good person?”
    I smile and shake my head at this. The way he is looking at me makes me laugh, and I concede that he has won.
    “Of course you’re a good person, Alvar Eide—you’re as good as gold. Now leave me alone. I’m tired.”
    Finally he gets up; he carefully puts the chair back in its place. Turns off the light, bows politely, and exits. I hear his footsteps on the staircase, the door being closed. I put my head on my pillow, feeling dizzy.
    “Goodness gracious me,” I say into the darkness. “What do you make of this, puss?”
    The cat is asleep, his paws twitching. He is hunting.
    “Gandalf,” I whisper, “listen to this. There is mutiny in the line outside the house!”
    The cat sleeps on determinedly. I turn on to my side and pull up my knees. What does it mean that I no longer have an orderly system? This has never happened before. What will it be like if they start arguing about the sequence? Is there a moment far into the future when this flow of people ends? Where will I turn then? Will I have to settle for people who have created their own lives, real people? Lives I have no control over, lives I cannot shape the way I always have? I can find no peace. I don’t like this night, this turn that my life has taken. I’m used to a certain amount of control, a certain order. But now Alvar Eide has wedged himself into my life. I turn to the wall and I want to go to sleep, but I’m troubled by words flying through my head. I want to enter the room where Alvar lives, but the door is shut and locked. I don’t find the key until the early-morning hours.

Chapter 2
    I ’M A GOOD PERSON .
    So thought Alvar Eide just as he was putting on his coat. He stood in his hall, studying his face in the mirror. This thought, that he was a good person, seemed to comfort him, as if he had suddenly realized that he had not amounted to much else in this world. He had never distinguished himself, never caused a stir. Not that he had wanted to either, but the years were mounting up—he had started to think about the end. At the age of forty-two he was thinking about the end. Perhaps because his father, Emmanuel Eide, had lived only to fifty-three. Then without warning his heart had stopped beating, never to start again. Alvar found it hard to believe that he himself would live past this age; he imagined his death was programmed into his genes like a time bomb and that it would go off in eleven years. But there was now one thing to comfort him one cool morning in November, just as he was about to walk the two kilometers to his place of work: I have never achieved anything major, I have never distinguished myself, but deep down I know I’m a good person.
    He stuck his arms through the coat’s sleeves and reached for a camel-colored woolen scarf he liked to wear. The scarf lay beautifully and neatly folded on the chest of drawers beneath the mirror.
He removed his gloves from a drawer and pulled them on; they were slightly too big. He knew they kept his hands warmer that way. On his head he wore nothing. Even so, he glanced at the mirror to check that his hair was in place, gently combed over from his right temple and all the way across to his left. There was no breeze