NOVEL

I Have Taken Steps Across a Boundary

The Love We Had, Chapter 23

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23

I stand at the window and look out over the city. I see buildings everywhere with lights in the windows. There is wet asphalt that shines in the street light and I see the light from the cars driving in different directions, up and down.

I think about what is happening in my life. I think of all these new events that I experience, that make everything change. Now everything has become so new, coloured. I’m thinking about how my life was in the past — an endless series of gray weekdays. And my life now, it has become something more than an endless series of identical days. I stand by the window and see, but I still do not see, because in my thoughts and in my feelings, I am a different place.

I only see this face and I long so much to hold it between my hands, this face I have to kiss, this face that I want to smile at, kiss warmly and hug, rub me close, while I feel his strong arms surrounding me, hold me.

I stand there watching, without seeing, because I am at a different place, and I feel a turmoil inside me, a turmoil that will not let go, that will never give me peace. I feel ice cold inside because I know that I have taken steps across a boundary, I have thrown myself into it, out in the dangerous, the forbidden, the tempting, the alluring.

I tell myself — it is like this, this is how it is now, it has become so, and I take responsibility for it myself.

They say it is like this when someone is unfaithful, it is the deceived himself who has much of the responsibility for what has happened.

When a spouse or partner, feeling degraded, let down, worthless and take the leap, it is the deceived person himself who have used their chances poorly who have failed and let down him or her whom she had promised eternal fidelity.

And I’m thinking about my husband, my Lars from the Fjord, my husband, who was such a catchy guy that I fell in love with, who said he loved me when I said I love you to him. This guy who little by little up through the years became like a stranger to me, this man who gradually slid away from me, and I from him, because of all these little and big words that came in between and like created an abyss between me and him,

“I don’t care,” he said.

And speaking of me he told me that I am lazy, I just mess up, I am selfish, I think only of myself, I can’t do anything right, I am in the way, I am of no use, I can do nothing right and I am lazy, I always forget, I am worth nothing, I just slip away.

“Yes, why don’t you come?” he says, “ — why are you so slow?”

He tells me I am nothing.

I’m nul.

It’s intolerable. To be looked down upon, to be overlooked to be mocked, to be humiliated by the one who said he loved me.

I am like anesthetized and I close my ear, I close my eyes. I don’t recognize myself; I am no longer the one I was, I am already gone far away from him and he doesn’t know it.

The story that the novel tells takes place in a small industrial town at the end of a fjord in western Norway. The story being told and the characters are fictional.

The photos included in the chapters are taken on location in the Odda Smelter (Odda Smelteverk, 1906–2003), the carbide factory that is part of the story.

The Love We Had

Part 1 The Longest Night -chapters 1–3, told by Lars. Part 2 The Light Inside -chapters 4–17, told by Aslak. Part 3 Save Our Secret Love -chapters 18 — XX, told by Eira.

Previous: Chapter 22 The House in Baker Road

For free access to 43 of 49 chapters, click here.

Øivind H. Solheim writes fiction, essays and articles aiming to help others understanding life, other humans and themselves. He has published five novels, two non-fiction books and a poetry book.

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