The Cold Song Read Online Free PDF

big old turn-of-the-century house belonging to Jenny Brodal.
    Every evening Jenny Brodal and Irma, the very tall woman who lived with her in her house, went for long walks together. Jenny was small and dainty and marched down the long road to the town center. Irma was big and broad and seemed to glide along a few steps behind her. Simen often came across the two women when he was out on his bike. Irma never said anything, but Jenny usually greeted him.
    “Hello, Simen,” she’d say, or something like that.
    “Hi,” he’d answer, never knowing whether he ought to stop and say hello properly or just ride on—in any case the two women were always long gone before he could make up his mind.
    Irma was the woman whom Jenny had
taken pity on
. Simen wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, to
take pity on
somebody, but that was what his mother had said when he asked who she was, the lady living at Mailund with Jenny Brodal.
    Simen did his best to avoid Irma, especially when she was out walking alone. Once, he had come riding down the road toward her and she had grabbed hold of his handlebars andhissed at him. She didn’t exactly breathe fire, but she might as well have. Irma seemed to be all lit up—he noticed this because the evening had been so dark. Glowing, as if she had just swallowed a fireball.
    He had no idea why she did it. Why she hissed. He hadn’t done anything, just cycling along, minding his own business. It wasn’t as if he had gotten in her way.
She
had grabbed
him
.
    His mother said that maybe Irma had been trying to have a bit of fun with him but just had a clumsy way of doing it. There was nothing wrong with Irma, his mother insisted, and Simen shouldn’t let his imagination run away with him, shouldn’t make up stories about people he didn’t know. What Simen had to understand was that Irma was probably a very nice person. She was someone whom Jenny Brodal had rescued from all kinds of dreadful situations, someone whom Jenny had
taken pity on
, but because Irma was so large (Simen’s mother hesitated before choosing a word that in her mind would accurately describe Irma’s overwhelming physique) and did not, therefore, look like an ordinary woman, there was a risk of people judging her purely based on appearances. Simen’s mother said, you must
never
judge people purely based on appearances. She said this because she always thought the best of people. But in this case his mother was wrong. Irma the giantess had glowed in the dark, grabbed hold of his handlebars, and hissed at him.
    But on this particular drizzly July evening Simen luckily met neither Jenny nor Irma. It was Jenny’s birthday and her big garden was full of people, he heard the voices and thelaughter from a long way off. It was a big party, which Simen thought was strange, when you considered how old Jenny Brodal really was. Over seventy, at least, maybe even over eighty. He wasn’t sure. But she was old. And was probably going to die soon. And Jenny Brodal obviously knew this, she wasn’t the kind of person who skirted the truth. Nor was Simen. His mother was going to die, his father was going to die. And someday Simen too would die. He was well aware of this. He had discussed it with his mother—she always gave straight answers. His father was more evasive. So why have a big party when all you had to look forward to was death? What was the point?
    Simen pedaled up the long, winding road to spy from the bushes. The mist lay over him and under him and ahead of him and behind him, and the voices from Jenny’s garden seemed to leap out of it. The voices came from the mist. The chatter and the laughter came from the mist. The winding road came from the mist, and all the people at the party came from the mist. And only Simen and his bike were real. They were flesh and blood and bones and wheels and steel and chain. They were one—Simen and his bike. Or at least they were until his wheel rammed a rock and Simen flew headfirst over the