Geir Gulliksen - The Story of a Marriage

I need to remember how things were for her that spring. In the days before it all happened. She was a woman in the prime of life. She could walk confidently into any room or situation. For her a crowd was like a friendly forest, she mingled easily, able to talk to anyone and everyone. Shed always had long hair, but after getting together with me she cut it short and dyed it black. At night shed sleep on her side, one hand tucked under her cheek. I lay behind her, my arms around her, both of us naked, and shed feel the warmth of my front against her back. At nighttime it was just the two of us; in the morning wed wake on our own side of the bed. She was usually woken by the children, or by me. The rooms were light, our voices soft. Theres a long period that can only be remembered as a time of happiness, both unlooked for and undeserved. We used to sit together around an oval dining table, Danish design, made of steel and white Respatex. The table was far too expensive for us that Saturday when we bought it, but we got used to that, the debts mounted and we barely gave it a thought. We sat at that table, morning and evening, the kids did their homework there. Later the table would be too big; it went to her and the kitchen in which she put it was smaller. She sold it in the end, and now it stands in somebody elses house; the table has a new life, like everything else we once shared.

She cycled beneath light leafy canopies. She breathed with an open mouth. She ran up the stairs, whenever she had to go up a floor, which was often. She never took the lift, she hated to stand still. This particular morning she was giving a presentation for staff in another department. It went well, she could feel she had them with her (their faces turning toward her like fresh green shoots waking to the light). Afterward the communications director was keen to make another booking with her. They agreed to exchange emails, and several people came up and thanked her for the talk. And then, on her way out, she spotted a man who made her stop. She didnt know why. She just stopped and watched him as he made his way through the crowd, his gaze fixed on her. His eyes, there was something about them, something mild but insistent, confident but searching, she wasnt sure what. Even later, when it was all over, she didnt know what it had been, she couldnt explain it, not even to herself, and certainly not to me.

He was tall and stood out, though not just because of his height. He had a long face with slightly slanted eyes, his skin was marked with tiny scars, acne as a teenager perhaps. Not exactly handsome, it has to be said, although I can scarcely be objective. Yet there was something seductive and intriguing about those eyes, or his smile perhaps, or the tilt of his head. She waited for him to reach her, and he smiled as he approached, pushing his way determinedly through the others who were filing out of the room. She felt rather hot, she didnt know why. Moments later they stood looking at each other, and she hoped that her face expressed a mildly amused curiosity: what had he come to say? Her face should convey that she had been held up and had no idea what he might want, but that she was prepared to give whatever it was her considered attention. He started talking. Something about public health, her own specific area of interest. He said things she might have said herself, although she thought he phrased them better. Or did he? His way of speaking was vaguely awkward, as though he was attempting to follow her perspective, but was incapable of letting go of his own. This last comment is, of course, a vast over-interpretation on my partI dont need to be told, I can see it myself. No, she probably found his comments both enriching and stimulating. He walked out of the room with her, accompanied her all the way down the stairs. They walked to her bicycle, still talking as she unlocked it and got ready to go.

Afterward she cycled slowly through the streets, she had to get back to the office, but she took her time. The world seemed to want to show off for her that morning: the maple trees or lime trees (she didnt much care what kind they were) seemed to spread their branches for her, a glossy magpie elegantly flicked its tail, young leaves stirred in an otherwise imperceptible breeze. She was happy. Contented in herself and her life. Every living thing opened itself up for her wherever she went.

She was afraid of nothing.

Once she had been a young girl, now she was a middle-aged woman. She was twenty-five when she first met me, it was a long time ago now, and I was just a few years older.

I called her Timmy. She had another name, an ordinary girls name, that she didnt really like. And then one evening, a month or so into our relationship, we were lying in bed in her old apartment watching Timmy Gresshoppe on TV. We werent actually watching anything, wed been in bed for hours on end, we had got up to eat and then gone back to bed, wed been obsessing over each other for so long, investigating what our bodies could do together, and we needed a break. We drank water, and I flicked through the channels, past an old Disney cartoonshe asked me to stop and go back. We watched it and we both found it touching, though it was me who cried. I had a young child whom I wouldnt see that day, that entire week, because I chose to be here in bed with her. That was why I cried, she knew that. But she pretended to believe I was moved by the film, and told me afterward that shed always liked