Free A Blessed Child by Linn Ullmann

stay up all night playing computer games. You can’t do that, Tomas. Magnus has got to get some sleep. He’s a child.
    She remembers that he said: I stayed with you longer than I really wanted, because of Magnus and Ane. But they’re not my children.
    In the days after he left her, she went through all the things he had bought with money they didn’t have and that he had then left behind, like relics; among them an idiotic cordless doorbell you could carry around the flat with you, if you happened to be in the toilet or in bed and were afraid of not hearing a ring at the door. What was more, you could adjust the volume and choose how you wanted it to sound. Tomas chose church bells. They had spent some time contemplating that. They had discussed the pros and cons. Shall we have this ring tone or that one? They didn’t talk about what was happening in the world, the fact that one war was succeeding another. They didn’t talk about the icon Tomas had bought in Paris for almost a hundred thousand kroner. It was supposedly from the sixteenth century and reminded him of a
Ukrainian actress, beautiful as an icon,
whom he had met at Nice airport. He hung the icon over the bed. She took it down. He put it back up. Don’t you realize they’re going to kick us out, Tomas? We can’t afford to borrow a hundred thousand kroner from the bank. We can’t afford to borrow ten thousand kroner. We can’t afford to borrow one thousand.
    Erika talked like Sundt.
    She objected like Sundt.
    She
was
Sundt.
    The icon turned out (and it came as no surprise) to be a forgery, worth a couple of hundred at the most. Tomas stared at Erika wide-eyed when she told him. He wanted to sell the icon, he said. It’s worth two hundred kroner, she said. Don’t you understand? Then we’ll throw it out, said Tomas. After that, he forgot all about it. Erika left it hanging there over the bed.
    Now and then she missed Sundt. He was cheap, but he wasn’t crazy. Sundt watched over the children in the night. Tomas didn’t watch over anybody but himself, and scarcely that. Tomas didn’t sleep in the double bed with her. He slept on a red sofa in a basement storage area he rented from the housing association. He’d actually been planning to use it as an office; it had a window, and he wanted somewhere to do his translation work without being disturbed by Erika and her children. But he’d gradually moved down there, where, in the end, he spent virtually all his time.

    They laughed a lot toward the end. Told stories and laughed. Tomas bought wine, music, books, and that weird doorbell, and they laughed! Erika stopped mentioning the money slipping through his fingers.
    Erika was
not
Sundt.
    But she threw the bags of music and books into the car and drove to the different stores. Can I have the money back? I don’t want a credit note. I want cash back. And please don’t let my husband buy any more books. Or any more CDs.
    But they talked about the new bell.
    All those ring tones.
    And you can carry it around the house with you.
    He left her a note before he disappeared.
    “For good,” the note said. “This time I’m going for good.”

Chapter 23
    “We’re nearly there now,” the woman beside her said. She was happy. She almost sang the words.
    Erika turned to her and smiled.
    Oh, so you’re talking now, she thought. Having sat beside me in the car, eating oranges without a word, without even loosening the belt of your coat.
    Throughout their ride together, the woman had made Erika feel that she’d done something wrong, put her foot in it, rushed in where angels fear to tread, or worse: that she had soiled something pure and delicate simply by taking up space.
     
    Now you listen here! I’ve met people like you before! My father, for example, when he was younger and I was still afraid of him. Or Tomas, my husband. He could read something out to me, something elegantly phrased he’d translated or written himself, and I’d make some comment, and