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nose, his eyes, his eyebrows were streaming; he could lick the rain off his lips, and it dripped from his coat, the bottoms of his trousers, and his bag. His shoes squished, and his white shirt and his undershorts clung to his skin. He called Mai from a pay phone outside the hotel. The operator put him through, and she answered right away. She sounded happy to hear his voice. Where was he calling from? she asked. Was he at work? Had he slept all right without her beside him? But she didn’t give him a chance to answer, just kept talking, told him she was dreading her lecture, worried she’d leave out something important.
    Eventually Johan did manage to get a word in. He asked what she was doing.
    “Writing, of course,” she said. “I’m sitting here writing.”
    “Yes, I know that. But just at the moment when I called, what were you doing then? I’d like to be able to picture you.”
    She laughed softly. “At the moment you called, or just before you called, I got up and went into the bathroom to brush my hair.”
    “A hundred times?”
    “No, just a couple of times. I was trying to decide whether I should wear it up or leave it down for this afternoon.”
    “Leave it down.”
    “D’you think?”
    “Yes.”
    It felt good, he realized, to be standing like this outside her hotel with the rain drumming on the roof of the phone booth, to be standing in a puddle of water, holding on to the wet receiver, to her voice and the image of her in front of the mirror; the shining hair that he imagined he could see light up the whole of her dark room, the whole of the hotel, the whole of Göteborg.
    “What are you wearing?” he asked.
    “My stripy nightgown, glasses.”
    “You mean you’re not dressed yet?”
    “Well, I got dressed and went down for breakfast; then I came back up to my room and put on my nightgown again. I like working in it. It’s nice and loose and not too warm.”
    “You’re warm enough, then,” he went on, “in just your nightgown? You’ve got the window closed so you don’t catch a cold?” He gazed up at the hotel and its rows of windows, behind one of which was Mai.
    “No,” she said, seeming a little surprised by the question. “I’ve got the window open. The sun’s shining. It’s really like spring here, just a gentle breeze ruffling my hair. How’s the weather in Oslo?”
    “It’s raining,” Johan said.
    “Typical,” she said.
    For a moment or two neither of them said anything.
    “What’ll it be, then?” Johan asked finally.
    “What?”
    “Your hair. Up or down?”
    “Down, I think.” She paused again, then added, “Or maybe up. I don’t know.”
    “I love you,” Johan said.
    “I love you too,” she replied. “Now I’d better hang up and get back to my writing.” She sighed. “I don’t know how you do it, Johan,” she blurted out. “Churning out articles day in, day out, I mean. This, to me, is sheer hell.”
    “To me too,” said Johan, laughing at her. “Don’t despair. You’ll get there! And tonight you can celebrate.”
    Then they hung up.
    Johan stayed in Göteborg for the rest of the day. He kept an eye out for her, waiting behind a tree until at long last she left the hotel. It was almost two o’clock and still raining. Under her long scarlet raincoat she was wearing a green sweater, a tight-fitting blue skirt, and green rubber boots. Her indoor shoes were probably in the plastic bag she carried in one hand, and her typewritten lecture notes in the bag over her shoulder. She was also clutching a large yellow umbrella on the point of blowing away. Her fair hair hung loose.
    He followed her to the convention center and watched as she was swallowed up by the crowd. He decided to wait until her lecture was over, and again he hid behind a tree. Hours went by. There was probably a lot of talk back and forth between her and the other pediatricians, he thought, maybe other lectures. Mai’s surely couldn’t be the only one. At last she emerged, with