The Indian Bride (2 page)

"Very well. I would like to book the ticket, then. How much is it?"

"Return flight?"

He hesitated. What if there were two of them flying back? That was what he was hoping for, dreaming of, and wishing for.

"Can I change the ticket later on?"

"Yes, that's possible."

"Then I'll take the return flight."

"That will be 6,900 kroner. You can collect your ticket at the airport, or we can mail it to you. Which would you prefer?"

"Mail it," he said. And gave her his name and address and credit card number. "Blindveien, number two."

"Just one small thing," the woman said when the booking was done. "It is no longer called Bombay."

"It isn't?" Gunder said, surprised.

"The city is called Mumbai. Since 1995."

"I'll remember that," said Gunder earnestly.

"SAS wishes you a pleasant flight."

He put the receiver down. At that moment Svarstad tore open the door to the office and gave him an angry look. He was looking to buy a harvester and had clearly decided to terrorize Gunder to the limit. The acquisition made him sweat all over.
He clung grimly to his family farm and no one dared to buy a new machine jointly with Svarstad. He was utterly impossible to work with.

"Svarstad," said Gunder, and leaped to his feet. Everything that had happened had made his cheeks go scarlet. "Let's get started."

***

In the days that followed Gunder was unsettled. His concentration was poor and he was wide awake. It was difficult to fall asleep at night. He lay thinking of the long journey and the woman he might meet. Among all of Bombay's—he corrected himself—among all of Mumbai's twelve million people there had to be one for him. She was living her life there and suspected nothing. He wanted to buy her a little present. Something from Norway that she had never seen before. A Norwegian filigree brooch, perhaps, for her red costume. Or the blue or the green costume. Anyway, a brooch was what it would be. The next day he would drive into town and find one. Nothing big or ostentatious, rather something small and neat. Something to fasten her shawl with, if she wore shawls. But perhaps she wore pants and sweaters—what did he know? His imagination went wild and he was still wide awake. Did she have a red dot on her forehead? In his mind he put his finger on it and in his mind she smiled shyly at him. "Very nice," said Gunder in English into the darkness. He had to practice his English. "Thank you very much. See you later." He did know a little.

***

Svarstad had as good as made up his mind. It was to be a Dominator from Claes, a 58S.

Gunder agreed. "Only the best is good enough," he smiled, bubbling over with his Indian secret. "Six-cylinder Perkins
engine with one hundred horsepower. Three-stage mechanical gearbox with hydraulic speed variator. Cutting board of three yards, sixty."

"And the price?" said Svarstad glumly, although he knew perfectly well that the cost of this marvel was 570,000 kroner. Gunder folded his arms across his chest.

"You need a new baling press, too. Make a proper investment for once and get yourself a Quadrant with it. You don't have much storage space."

"I need to have round bales," Svarstad said. "I can't handle big bales."

"That's just giving in to a habit," said Gunder unperturbed. "If you have the proper tools, you can reduce the number of seasonal workers. They cost money, too, the Poles, don't they? With a new Dominator and a new press you can do the job without them. I'll give you an unbeatable price as well. Trust me."

Svarstad chewed on a straw. He had a furrow in his weather-beaten brow and sadness in his deep-set eyes, which gave way slowly to a radiant dream. No other salesman would have tried selling one more piece of machinery to a man who could barely afford a harvester, but Gunder had gambled and as usual he had won.

"Consider it an investment in the future," he said. "You're still a young man. Why settle for second best? You're working yourself to death. Let the Quadrant make big bales—they stack easily and take up less room. No one else in the area has dared to try big bales. Soon they'll every one of them come running to have a look."

That did it. Svarstad was delighted at the prospect, a small group of neighbors poking their noses into his yard. But he needed to make a call. Gunder showed him into the empty office. Meanwhile he went away to draw up the contract; the sale was practically in the bag. It could not have worked out better.
A substantial sale before the long journey. He would be able to make his journey with a clear conscience.

Svarstad reappeared. "Green light from the bank," he said. He was lobster red, but his eyes shone beneath the bushy brows.

"Excellent," Gunder said.

After work he went into town and found a jewelry shop. He stared at the glass counter containing rings, only rings. He asked to be shown the national costume silver and the assistant asked him what kind.

Gunder shrugged. "Well, anything. A brooch, I think. It's a present. But she doesn't have a Norwegian national costume."

"You only wear filigree brooches with a national costume" pronounced the woman in a schoolmistressy tone.

"But it has to be something from Norway," Gunder said. "Something essentially Norwegian."

"For a foreign lady?" the assistant wanted to know.

"Yes. I was thinking she would wear it with her own national costume."

"And what sort of costume is that?" she asked, her curiosity increasing.

"An Indian sari," said Gunder proudly.

Silence behind the counter. The assistant was evidently torn as to what she should do. She was not unaffected by Gunder's charming stubbornness and she could hardly refuse to sell him what he wanted to buy. On the other hand the Norwegian Craft Council did have rules as to what was permissible. However, if a woman wanted to wander about in India wearing a filigree brooch on a bright orange sari, then the Craft Council would be none the wiser. So she got out the tray with the national costume silver and selected a medium-size filigree brooch, wondering if the strangely self-possessed customer was aware of how much it was going to cost.

"How much is that one?" Gunder said.

"Fourteen hundred kroner. To give you an idea, I can show
you this one from Hardanger. We have bigger brooches than this one and smaller ones, too. However, there is often quite a lot of gold in those saris, so I suppose it ought to be plain—if it's to have the desired effect."

Here her voice took on an ironic twist, but she suppressed it when she saw Gunder. He took the spiraling brooch from the velvet and held it in his rough hands. Held it up to the light. His face took on a dreamy expression. She softened. There was something about this man, this heavy, slow, shy man, that she warmed to in spite of everything. He was courting.

Gunder did not want to look at any other brooches. He would only begin to have doubts. So he bought the first one, which was anyway the best, and had it wrapped. He planned to unwrap it when he got home and admire it again. In the car on his way back he drummed on the wheel as he imagined her brown fingers opening the package. The paper was black with tiny specks of gold. The ribbon around the box was blood red. It lay on the seat next to him. Perhaps he needed to get some pills for the trip. For his stomach. All that foreign food, he thought. Rice and curry. Spicy and hot as hell. And Indian currency. Was his passport valid? He was going to be busy. He had better call Marie.

***

The village where Gunder lived was called Elvestad. It had 2,347 inhabitants. A wooden church from the Middle Ages, restored in 1970. A gas station, a school, a post office, and a roadside café. The café was an ugly cross between a hut and a raised storehouse; it stood on pillars and steep steps led up to the entrance. On entering you immediately faced a jukebox, a Wurlitzer that was still in use. On the roof was a red and white sign with the words
EINAR'S CAFé
. At night Einar switched on the light in the sign.

Einar Sunde had run the café for seventeen years. He had a
wife and children and was in debt up to his eyeballs because of his grandiose chalet-style villa just outside the village. A license to sell beer had meant that he was at last able to meet his mortgage payments. For this simple reason there were always people in the café. He knew the villagers and ran the place with an iron hand. He pretty soon found out which year most of the young people were born in and would put his hand over the beer tap if they tried it when they were still underage. There was also a village hall, where weddings and confirmations were celebrated. Most of the villagers were farmers. Added to that were quite a few newcomers, people who had fled the city having entertained a romantic notion of a quieter life in the country. This they had gotten. The sea was only half an hour away, but the salty air did not reach the village; it smelled of onions and leeks, or the rank smell of manure in the spring and the sweet smell of apples in the autumn. Einar was from the capital, but he had no longing to go back. He was the sole proprietor of the café. As long as he had the café there wasn't a living soul who would dare try setting up within miles. He would run this café until they carried him out in a box. Because he managed to prevent excessive drinking and fights, everyone felt comfortable going in there. Women for coffee and pastries, kids for frankfurters and Coke, young people for a beer. He aired the place properly, emptied the ashtrays and replaced the nightlights whenever they burned out, kept it impeccably clean. His wife washed the red and white checkered tablecloths in the machine at home. True, the place lacked style, but he had drawn the line at actual kitsch. There were no plastic flowers. He had recently invested in a bigger dishwasher to save him having to wash the glasses by hand. The health inspector was welcome to visit his kitchen; it was fit for use as far as the equipment and cleanliness went.

It was here, in Einar's Café, that people kept abreast of what was going on in the village. Who was seeing whom, who was in the process of getting a divorce, and which farmer might any
second now have to sell out. A single minicab was at the villagers' disposal. Kalle Moe drove a white Mercedes and could be contacted by landline or cell phone, always sober and always available. If he wasn't, he would get you a minicab from town. As long as Kalle Moe operated his minicab service in the village, there was no room for any other license. He was past sixty and there were many waiting in the wings.

Einar Sunde was at his café six days a week till ten o'clock in the evening on weekdays. On Saturdays he stayed open until midnight; on Sundays the café was closed. He was a hard worker, moved quickly, a beanpole of a man with reddish hair and long thin arms. A tea towel was tucked into his waistband; it was replaced the moment it was stained. His wife, Lillian, who hardly ever saw him except at night, lived her own life and they had nothing in common anymore. They couldn't even be bothered to argue. Einar didn't have time to dream of something better, he was too busy working. The chalet-style villa was worth 1.6 million kroner and had a sauna and a gym, which he never had the time to use.

All or part of the village's hard core hung out at the café. It consisted mostly of young men ages eighteen to thirty, with or without girlfriends. Because Einar had a license to sell beer, they never went into town to meet girls from farther away. You could walk home from the café; the village was no bigger than that. They would rather have a few more beers than pay for an expensive minicab from town. So they married local girls and stayed here. However, before it got to that, the girls were passed around. It created a peculiar solidarity, with many unwritten rules.

Following a great deal of debate in the local council, Elvestad had acquired a shopping center, as a result of which the local shop, Gunwald's one-stop shop, was languishing next to the Shell gas station. Within the shopping center some brave soul had set up shop with two sun beds, another had opened a florist's,
and a third a small perfumery. On the floors above were offices for the doctor and the dentist, and Anne's hairdressing salon. None of the young people from the village went there. Their hair had to be cut in town. Studs and rings in belly buttons and noses were also taken care of in town. Anne knew their parents and had been known to refuse. The older people, however, loyally shopped at Gunwald's. They came with their granny shopping carts and ancient gray rucksacks and bought hashed lung and blood pudding and soft, sharp cheese. It was a good business for Ole Gunwald. He had paid off his mortgage ages ago.

Gunder never went to the café, but Einar knew very well who he was. On rare occasions Gunder would stop and buy a Krone strawberry ice cream, which if the weather was good he ate outside sitting by a plastic table. Einar knew Gunder's house, knew that it was about two and a half miles from the center of the village toward Randskog. Besides, all the farmers in the village bought their machinery from Gunder. He was just coming through the door now, his hand already in his inside pocket.

"Just wanted to know," he said self-consciously, and rather hurriedly considering this was Gunder, "how long would it take to get from here to the airport by car?"

"Gardermoen airport?" said Einar. "I'd say an hour and a half. If you're going abroad you need to be there one hour before departure. And if I were you I'd throw in another half hour to be on the safe side."

He kept on rubbing a triangular ashtray.

"Morning flight?" he asked, curious.

Gunder picked out an ice cream from the freezer. 10:15.

"You'll have to get up early then."

Einar turned his back and carried on working. He was neither friendly nor smiling; he looked like a much-misunderstood man and did not meet Gunder's gaze. "If I were you I'd leave by 7:00."

Gunder nodded and paid. Asking Einar was preferable to revealing his ignorance to the woman from SAS. Einar knew who Gunder was and would not want to embarrass him. On the other hand, everyone in the village would know about his journey this very same evening.

"You going far?" Einar asked casually, wiping another ashtray.