Unformed Landscape Read Free Page B

having a father. That’s what everyone always said. The child needs a father.
    Later on, Thomas had gone over and joined them when they were all drinking hot chocolate and eating cake in the community center. He had asked whether the chair next to her was free, and then sat down before she could answer. He had talked about himself, about growing up in Tromso, about his travels. Kathrine hadn’t liked him any better, but the boy was beaming as he hadn’t for a long time, and was all excited. Thomas gave him something, a little toy. Helge was sitting at a corner table with a couple of colleagues. They had brought beer, and were drinking and talking noisily about the bad fish yields of the last few months, and about bikes, and about women. Once, Helge looked across to Kathrine, and grinned at seeing her sitting together with Thomas. Thomas was his boss, but Helge wasn’t interested in Kathrine or the baby anymore, not after Kathrine had told him he didn’t have to pay her any more maintenance, and just to leave her alone.
    Then Thomas had called Kathrine a couple of times, had asked her out for a coffee, and then for dinner. She had accepted the invitations, she no longer remembered why. Maybe, like the little boy, she was dreaming of a family, a big house, and a life free from worries. Then he had invited her back on Sunday, her and the child, to meet his parents. It had been a ghastly occasion, stiff and full of little embarrassments and humiliations. But when Kathrine had stepped out onto the glassed-in balcony to smoke acigarette, Thomas had come after her and kissed her, and she had kissed him back, in the dull despair that had come over her in that chill house.
    Everything thereafter had been a mistake. Kathrine had been overrun by Thomas’s purposefulness, dazzled by the stories about his past and his future. That evening they had slept together for the first time, a rushed job in Kathrine’s living room, while the child was in the bedroom, playing with a train set Thomas had given him. Thomas had knelt in front of the sofa. He hadn’t even taken off his clothes.
    That day, Kathrine had met Thomas’s sister Veronica, and Einar, her husband. At the time they were living with Thomas’s parents, in the big house. Einar owned the little computer store on the main street. But the business wasn’t doing well, and Veronica and Einar decided to go back to Tromso. Then Thomas said the apartment in his parents’ house would be empty. If we take it, he said, then we can get the whole house, when my parents are dead. But that was later on, when they were already married, and when Thomas was already living with Kathrine.
    Thomas knew what he was after. When he started talking about marriage, it hadn’t even crossed Kathrine’s mind. His life represented a bold stroke through the unformed landscape of her life. Like the pistes for a snowmobile, marked with poles in the snow, his life cut across hers, with an objective and a destination. It was possible that Thomas himself didn’t know why he had chosen this particular path, but he had put down the marker poles, and it wasa way that could be gone, and that he was going to go with her.
    Kathrine was tired. Thomas was certainly in bed by now. He had always been able to sleep. A clear conscience, he sometimes said, and laughed, and Kathrine hadn’t understood why. She had a clear conscience. She had never said she loved him. And she didn’t have any secrets from him. If there was something he wanted to know, he could ask her. But he never asked her about her life. She wasn’t even sure if he knew that she had been married to Helge. What I don’t know, he sometimes said, and laughed.
    Thomas. That was his name. Her husband. My husband, she thought. He was thirty, two years older than she was. His family was his family. Everything else was a lie. Thomas, my husband, thought Kathrine. By the time they married, they hadn’t slept together for months. On their wedding night,