Norwegian by Night Read Online Free PDF

manipulating me than you two. I’m not giving in until you raise your game.’
    â€˜Right, well, I’m going out. So who’s with me?’
    Lars raises his hand.
    â€˜Lars! Great! Anyone else?’ She looks around the room. ‘No one else?’
    â€˜I have things to do,’ says Sheldon.
    â€˜Like what?’
    â€˜Private things.’
    â€˜I don’t believe you.’
    â€˜So what?’
    â€˜It’s a nice day, and I want you out of the house.’
    â€˜Did you know that I went through eight cameras making that book? Six were brutally smashed by the subjects — Mario’s was the first to go, one I dropped in the Hudson, and one was actually eaten by a dog. What I loved was how the dog blamed the camera and not me. The photo of the inside of his mouth is on page thirty-seven. And, of course, having pushed the button himself, the dog got the photo credit.’
    â€˜What’s your point?’
    â€˜It’s cute how you think I have a point.’
    She scowls. Sheldon smiles. Lars announces he is going to get dressed. Breakfast is over.
    Rhea is alone with Sheldon.
    â€˜What’s with you? I said there was something I wanted to tell you.’
    â€˜Go out with your husband. Go to the cabin. Make love on a fur blanket. Eat moose jerky. Drink akevitt that’s crossed the equator a few times. Two hundred years ago, we Jews wouldn’t have been allowed in this country. Now you’ve found a nice boy, and he loves you, and you’re going to have pretty babies. I’ll be here when you get back.’
    â€˜Sometimes I think there’s an actual person in there with you, and then other times … I think it’s just you.’
    â€˜Go get dressed and go. I’ll rinse my mug.’
    Rhea’s arms are still crossed. She looks at Sheldon as though deciding something. And then, in a low voice touched with anger, she says, ‘I had a miscarriage.’
    There is a deep silence from her grandfather, and his face settles. The muscles release, and for a moment she sees him in all his force. The years flow into him. A frightening weariness comes to his mouth and brow. She immediately regrets saying this. She should have stuck to her agreement with Lars. To break it slowly. To prepare the ground.
    Sheldon stands quietly and wraps the robe around himself. And then, as though the tears were there all along, he walks back to his room and openly weeps alone.
    Hours later, at two in the afternoon, he is alone in the apartment. His earlier insistence that Rhea and Lars go out had become quite different in tone when it was repeated later. He’d made it clear to them that he needed solitude, and so they went.
    Dressed in jeans, a white button-down shirt, and a pair of workman’s boots, he has recovered his composure and is comfortably stretched on the sofa with a book by Danielle Steele when the shouting starts again.
    He has heard domestic squabbles before — the rounds of yelling, the escalation, the occasional banging, and even the beatings and sobs. But this is different. The cadence of the argument is wrong. There is no turn-taking between angry participants. The man had started screaming and then kept it up. The woman, this time, hasn’t made a sound.
    She must be in there , Sheldon thinks.
    It doesn’t have the pauses of a phone conversation. The diatribe is too linear, too intimate. The hollering voice is too present.
    It doesn’t matter in the slightest that Sheldon can’t understand a word, because the message is clear. He has had enough experience with humanity, with its range of rage, to know what is happening. There is cruelty and viciousness in that voice. It is more than a squabble. It is a battle.
    Then there is a loud bang.
    Sheldon puts the book down and sits upright on the sofa. He is attentive, his brows furrowed.
    No, not a gunshot. It wasn’t sharp enough. He knows gunshots from his life and from his