Unformed Landscape Read Online Free

she had induced him to do something that he later referred to as playing. But it wasn’t a game. And then they didn’t talk about it anymore. Thomas avoided the subject, as he avoided the thing itself. The thing, Kathrine said, and she laughed aloud. And since then, another half a year had passed without them sleeping together—or, as she said, making love.
    “What did you marry him for?” asked Morten, when she told him about it.
    “Because he loved me,” Kathrine replied.
    My husband, said Kathrine, by the open window, Thomas, my husband. She smiled. A man going by on the oppositeside of the road looked across to her, a drunken seaman. He waved, and she waved back. He said something she couldn’t make out. She said something that might have been a greeting or a suggestion. The man shook his head, and went on. Kathrine shut the window.
    On the upper story of Nils H. Nilsen’s fish factory, a few windows were lit up. Where foreign workers lived. Kathrine tried to imagine the rooms behind the windows, and the people who sat there, watched television or read. Who made love or ate dinner. She imagined someone over there looking across to her, to the window where she was still standing. And when she lay down on the bed again, she imagined someone over there seeing the light on in her room, but not seeing her, and wondering who it was who lived there. Continually wondered about it, every night. When every night there was someone different in the room.
    Kathrine used to walk past the fishermen’s refuge every day. And now she was inside it, sitting by the window, eating the breakfast that was included in the price. When she stepped out on the street, she paused for a moment. It was as though she was waiting for herself, for the Kathrine who hadn’t doubted, hadn’t asked, hadn’t run away, and whose life had continued as before. She looked up the road, in the direction from which she used to come every morning. Then she saw Svanhild clearing the table inside. She waved, and Svanhild waved back and smiled, and Kathrine set off.
    She walked down the street, quickly and without looking back. She thought of the day ahead and the work to be done. Her boss was already in the office. He was smoking. She opened the window, made coffee. Later, she picked up the mail, and brought the whole stack to her boss, without looking through it. He liked to do it all himself. It wasn’t much, in any case. Then he called her in. “This one’s not for me,” he said, and handed her an envelope that had his name on it, and two sheets of single-spaced typing. Kathrine read. She read, and sensed her boss looking at her. But he didn’t say anything. He waited.
    “Don’t you dare show your face in our house again, ever. Leave our brother/brother-in-law/son alone! You have abused our hospitality and our trust, and brought filth into our house. We have seen through you, and refuse to be taken in anymore by a rotten bitch like you. Your lewdness and abomination you must bear by yourself.”
    The telephone rang, but Kathrine only stared at it, her boss stared at it. Kathrine listened to it ringing and ringing, and finally stopping. One of her colleagues left the customs office on his way to inspect a ship that had just come in. Kathrine was still holding the letter in her hand, the second page of it. The first she had dropped onto the table. She read the last few sentences again.
    “Good-bye, then, and for good. Catch yourself some other man, but spare Thomas, and spare us. We will not tolerate your presence in our house, under any circumstances! God will punish you for your misdeeds, youwhore! Because God knows the path of righteousness; while the path of godlessness leads to destruction.”
    Kathrine sat down and stood up again. She took a cigarette from her boss’s pack, which lay on the desk. He lit it for her. She had dropped the second page of the letter on the desk as well. Her boss picked it up, and read aloud: “Copies of this