“Of Rakel?”
“I hated her.”
“She hadn’t done anything wrong.”
“That was probably why.” Kaja laughed. “You left me because of her, that’s all the reason a woman needs to hate someone, Harry.”
“I didn’tleaveyou, Kaja. You and I were two people with broken hearts who were able to comfort each other for a while. And when I left Oslo, I was running away from both of you.”
“But you said you loved her. And when you came back to Oslo the second time, it was because of her, not me.”
“It was because of Oleg, he was in trouble. But yes, I always loved Rakel.”
“Even when she didn’t want you?”
“Especiallywhen she didn’t want me. That seems to be how we’re made, doesn’t it?”
Kaja’s four fingers began to retreat.
“Love’s complicated,” she said, curling up closer and laying her head on his chest.
“Love’s the root of everything,” Harry said. “Good and bad. Good and evil.”
She looked up at him. “What are you thinking about?”
“Was I thinking about something?”
“Yes.”
Harry shook his head. “Just a story about roots.”
“Come on. Your turn to talk.”
“OK. Have you heard about Old Tjikko?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a pine tree. One time Rakel, Oleg and I drove to Fulufjället in Sweden because Oleg had learned in school that’s where Old Tjikko, the oldest tree in the world, was growing—it was almost ten thousand years old. In the car Rakel explained that the tree was born back when human beings first invented agriculture and Britain was still part of the continent. When we reached the mountain, we discovered to our disappointment that Old Tjikko was a scruffy, windblown, rather small spruce tree. We were told by a ranger that the tree itself is only a few hundred years old, and that it was one of several trees, and that the root system that these trees had grown from was the part that was ten thousand years old. Oleg was sad, he’d been looking forward to telling the rest of the class that he’d seen the world’s oldest tree. And of course we couldn’t even see the roots of the scrappy little tree. So I told him that he’d be able to tell his teacher that roots aren’t a proper tree, and that the world’s oldest known tree is in the White Mountains in California and is five thousand years old. That cheered Oleg up, and he ran the whole way down because he couldn’t wait to get home and lord it over his classmates. When we went to bed that night, Rakel curled up next to me and told me she loved me, and that our love was like that root system. The trees might rot, get struck by lightning, we might argue, I might get drunk. But no one, not us or anyone else, could touch the part that was underground. That would always be there, and a new tree would always emerge and grow.”
They lay in silence in the darkness.
“I can barely hear your heartbeat,” Kaja said.
“Her half,” Harry said. “It’s supposed to stop once the other half is gone.”
Kaja suddenly lay on top of him.
“I want to smell your right armpit,” she said.
He let her. She lay there with her cheek close to his, and he felt the warmth of her body through her washed-out pyjamas and his own clothes.
“Maybe you need to take your jeans off for me to be able to smell it,” she whispered with her lips close to his ear.
“Kaja…”
“Don’t, Harry. You need it. I need it. Like you said. Comfort.” She moved just enough to make room for her hand.
Harry grabbed it. “It’s too soon, Kaja.”
