The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

town where BMWs and Volvos gently threaded their way up through the bends on their way home
to electric garage doors and dinners on tables, prepared by fitness-centre-slim housewives taking
their career breaks with just a little help from nannies.
Even through the solid floors of the wooden house she had inherited from her father, Rakel could
hear the music from Oleg’s room on the first floor. Led Zeppelin and the Who. When she had been
eleven years old, it would have been unthinkable to listen to music from her parents’ generation.
But Oleg had been given these CDs by Harry and he played them with genuine love.
She thought about how thin Harry had become, how he had shrunk. Just like her memory of him. It
was almost frightening how someone you have been intimate with can fade and vanish. Or perhaps
that was why; you had been so close to each other that afterwards, when you no longer were, it
seemed unreal, like a dream you soon forget because it had happened only in your head. Perhaps
that was why it had been a shock to see him again. To embrace him, to smell his aroma, to hear his
voice, not on the telephone, but from a mouth with those strangely soft lips in that hard and ever
more lined face of his. To look into those blue eyes with the gleam that varied in intensity as he
talked. Just like before.
Yet she was glad it was over, that she had put it behind her. That this man had become a person
with whom she would not share her future, a person who would not bring his grubby reality into
their lives.
She was better now. Much better. She looked at her watch. He would be here soon. For, unlike
Harry, he tended to be on time.
Mathias had suddenly stood there one day. At a garden party under the auspices of the
Holmenkollen Residents’ Association. He didn’t even live in the neighbourhood, he had been
invited by friends, and he and Rakel had sat talking all evening. Mostly about her in fact. And he
had listened attentively, a bit like doctors do, she had thought. But then he had rung her two days
later and asked her whether she would like to see an exhibition at the Henie-Onstad Art Centre in
Høvikodden. Oleg was welcome to join them, because there was a children’s exhibition, too. The
weather had been terrible, the art mediocre and Oleg fractious. But Mathias had managed to lift the
mood with his good humour and acid comments about the artist’s talent. And afterwards he had
driven them home, apologised for his idea and promised with a smile never to take them anywhere
ever again. Unless they asked him, of course. After that Mathias had gone to Botswana for a week.
And had rung her the evening he came home, to ask if he could meet her again.
She heard the sound of a car changing down to tackle the steep drive. He drove a Honda Accord of
older vintage. She didn’t know why, but she liked the idea of that. He parked in front of the garage,
never inside. And she liked that, too. She liked the fact that he brought a change of underwear and a
toilet bag in a holdall he then took away with him the next morning. She liked him asking her when
she wanted to see him again and taking nothing for granted. That might change now, of course, but
she was ready for it.
He stepped out of the car. He was tall, almost as tall as Harry, and smiled to the kitchen window
with his open, boyish face, even though he must have been dead on his feet after the inhumanly
long shift. Yes, she was ready for it. For a man who was present, who loved her and prioritised their
little trio above everything else. She heard a key being turned in the front door. The key she had
given him the previous week. Mathias had looked like one big question mark at first, like a child
who had just received a ticket to a chocolate factory.
The door opened, he was inside and she was in his arms. She thought even his woollen coat smelt