Stella Descending Read Free Page B

ailments. I’ll take it for a spin. It will do us both good, the Beetle and me. This evening, when I get back home, I shall have entrecôte of venison, washed down with a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Sometimes I light a candle for my wife, Gerd. Today I shall light a candle for Stella too. Before going to bed, I will take two sleeping tablets and possibly listen to part of a piano sonata by Schubert.
    It is my hope—a thought I have every morning, not least this one—that this will be the last day of my life.
    MY HOME FOR the past thirty years has been a three-room apartment in Majorstuen. There is no sense of harmony between the apartment in Majorstuen and myself. I have always considered the place temporary. The rooms are furnished haphazardly, I have never purchased a stick of furniture myself, and when I moved here after Gerd died, I brought nothing with me from the old house—nothing except the gilt mirror that now hangs in the hall. I just sold everything else and handed over the key.
    Every Thursday a woman about fifteen years my junior comes to clean the place. No, not a woman. That’s not the right word. An old hag, that’s what she is. An offense to the eye. I don’t know why I ever gave her the job, and I’m sure she has no idea why she took it. It was all so long ago there’s no sense brooding over it now. My only comfort is that she detests me as much as I detest her. Which does not mean we are not utterly civil to each other. I call her Miss Sørensen, even though no one calls anyone Miss these days, and she calls me Grutt. That is my name. I am Axel Åkermann Grutt. I happen to know that the old hag’s first name is Mona, and that as a young woman she held some minor position in the Oslo tax department. So—only to myself of course—I call her Miss Money Sørensen, or simply Money. Because she is a grasping old hag, and because she sometimes steals from me—ten kroner here and ten kroner there— although I never say anything. That would put us both in an untenably awkward situation. I have lots of other names for her as well, but some things I shall keep to myself till my dying day, which can’t be too soon. Besides, a bit of decorum is surely in order, even when it comes to Money. Not that she has ever shown any, coming to work in those short skirts of hers with her garish lipstick and woolen panty hose. If I had any trace of that highly fashionable quality
empathy,
I might well feel sorry for her, even to the point of not begrudging her the petty sums she steals from me each week. Money is old, weary, and pathetic, but like most women she imagines that short skirts and red lips will conceal her wretchedness rather than lay it bare.
    Money is one person I see regularly. The other, apart from Stella, who is being buried today—she fell or was pushed off a roof on Frognerplass—is Stella’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Amanda. She often pays me a visit. It used to be she only came with her mother, but eventually she started coming on her own, too, and despite the fact that we don’t have much to say to each other and despite the fact that I don’t really like children—I think they’re overrated, to be honest—we spend a few hours in each other’s company now and then. Sometimes we play cards, I have taught her to play Høff, a game for two players using two packs of cards. She is also impressed by my feeble magic tricks, which is rather flattering. I used to be quite good. Amanda has pale fine-drawn features. She tells me she likes video games. I tell her I like Ferris wheels. It would never occur to either of us to speak of our loneliness.
    Money and Amanda. There you have the circle of my acquaintance among the living. I could perhaps add to this list the blank-eyed young woman at the newsstand on the corner where I buy my papers. After all, I do see her every day. And speak to her, too. I say good morning and tell her which newspapers I would like (the same five, always), and then,