rebecca dinerstein
I learned a great deal of Norwegian this way. When the sky darkened slightly, we got in the car to chase the midnight sun. The roads were visited nightly by arctic foxes, little things, and lined by construction machines. We’d stop to examine abandoned backhoes whose digging claws rested on the ground, mouths open. I crawled inside each claw and sat bunched up in the corner, while Nils took notes on the machine’s industrial yellow. My work on the fourth interior wall progressed until it was nearly indistinguishable from Nils’s original three. We would soon be ready for inspection, and indeed the men were due in less than a week. Haldor and Sigbjørn became nervous, and kinder. An approved KORO installation would mean much- desired traffic for the museum. And they knew what it would mean to Nils—at least, they could imagine what rejection would mean to Nils. It was the Thursday before the government’s Sunday visit, and Nils and I were driving from Leknes up to the barn. There had been a storm overnight—we had woken to find the radish fields beside the colony flooded, and the ox gone. Now the sun had recovered and spread through the washed air, glinting off the road and the roofs of passing cars, making us squint. I’d never seen such strong light. Nils was terrified, imagining the exterior wall damage. I was dazed, watching bluebells shoot past in the side shrubs, when a black line bisected the pale world. A boy was walking up the road’s shoulder. His back was to us, and he wore black clothes from neck to toe. He had the darkest hair I’d seen on these blond islands. He walked slowly, and quickly fell away behind our car. I rolled down my window, stuck 92
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27/02/2015 09:10