Unikum 09 November Web

had weakened a bit. However, as the rain calmed
down, the sound of the wind became overpowering.
It sounded like the howling of hundreds of huskies,
or perhaps wolves, and it had a rhythm of its own –
one moment the wind would be tearing through the
valley with this unearthly sound ringing in my ears,
and the very next instant it would die down, and the
sounds of howling would grow faint – like a whisper
coming from far away.
I was stumbling and slipping on the slushy ground. Up
ahead, I could make out the dark shadow of a long,
gigantic building from which the light was coming.
As I came up to it, the harsh, insistent cawing of a
crow cut through the wind and the rain and with
a start I realised that there was another shadow
moving about outside the building. The light, which
seemed to be coming through the chink of a massive
door, was momentarily blocked and I saw that there
was another shadowy figure at the door. This person
was knocking at the door and shouting to attract
attention.
I was about 100 meters away when I saw the door
open slightly. A hefty-looking woman wearing an oldfashioned
skirt and bodice. A sense of relief surged
over me. I decided to throw in my lot with this stranger
and started running, so that I could ask for shelter
together with him or her. However, as I got closer, I
realised things were not going according to plan. The
woman was gesticulating with rapid gestures and
saying something to him – she seemed angry.
Finally, she slammed the door quite violently just as
I got there. The stranger who had been looking for
shelter before me seemed to be in shock. Now in the
faint light coming from the home, I saw that he was
probably a tramp. He was wearing a loose cloak made
of some coarse material and carrying a crumpled bag
in one hand and a long, sturdy, walking stick in the
other. As he turned around to look at me, his face came
into the light- a gaunt, long-suffering countenance,
with a straggly white beard that was dripping with
water and wet hair that seemed plastered to his scalp.
At the spot where his left eye should have been was a
red, fleshy wound.
There was something both ravaged and terrifying
about him. He exuded the same energy – a mix
of madness, shrewdness, pain and world-weary
experience that I have seen in the faces of the
homeless and the drug addicts in big cities
all over the world. Perhaps he’s one of those,
I thought to myself, one of this tribe that I
have seen hanging around on the benches
of the park next to the Kristiansand
cathedral. Rage bubbled up inside
me even as I thought this.
Did the woman shut the door
in his face just because he
looked homeless? How could
someone be so inhuman as to
refuse shelter in the middle
of a storm?
Fuelled by this rage, I started
beating on the door. Louder
and louder, I shouted till the
door suddenly opened and
out came the same woman. Up
close, she seemed even bigger,
with a face like Erling Haaland
and a physique to match. Faced
by this amazon, my anger suddenly
melted as she started shouting at me.
I could barely make out two or three phrases….’stikk
av’, ‘Elfablot’, ‘idiot’, ‘drit’ and so on.
Anyway, long story short, this paragon of Norwegian
physicality basically shook a stick at us, shouted a
bundle of abuses and once again slammed the door
shut. This time though, there was no anger inside me.
Also, in trying to get away from her, I had basically
slipped and was now lying ass down in the mud as I
looked up at the old man. He offered me a hand and
started saying something as he helped me up.
Unfortunately, my Norwegian is really basic and it
looked like he couldn’t understand my English. And
so we were at an impasse, as I racked my brain for all
the wonderful things I had learnt in Norwegian class.
Now let’s see, I could fluently say things like ‘han reiser
med tog fra Oslo til Trondheim’, ‘Tom og Lisa drikker
kaffe’ and ‘Det er Magnus. Han kommer fra Bergen’.
I could also count from zero to thirty in Norwegian
numerals and tell the time ‘Klokka er fem over fem’
for instance. However, he hadn’t asked me the time
and nor was he interested in that blasted Magnus
(or Tom og Lisa for that matter), so there was not
much that I could offer by way of conversation.
After some gesticulations on both sides, I pointed
him to the ash tree and we quickly hot-footed it
there. It must have had a really thick canopy
of leaves, for despite all the rain and wind, the
ground underneath was still remarkably dry. The
old man, started wringing the water out of his
beard and cloak, as I took off my backpack to check
how wet it had gotten. To my surprise, I found
three packets of McDonalds chicken McNuggets
that I had bought earlier and stuffed into the
backpack in the morning. This cheered me up
and led to a brainwave. I had finally thought of
something intelligent I could say in Norwegian to
30 30