Free Child Wonder by Roy Jacobsen

crack our laces to undo our boots and hugged us both, and was nice and said Linda had to have a bath now, she was as cold as ice, poor thing, and she loved having a bath, didn’t she?
    “Yes.”
    When at last she was sitting in the bathtub and whizzing her new duckling around, a pre-Christmas present, of which there had been quite a few, clothes mostly, and Mother had laid and unlaid and relaid and unlaid the table and changed the cloth before plumping for white, she said to me:
    “You seemed to be enjoying yourselves on the slope.”
    “You bet.”
    “I noticed you were playing with the other kids.”
    “Mm.”
    “You were having a good time, I s’pose …?”
    “…”
    And because adults can never get it into their noodles what idiots children are, this too rose to the dizzying heights of Freddy 2-style conversation, that is, until I left her and knelt in front of the T.V. and pressed the “on” button, aware it was time for a Jiminy Cricket cartoon. But hardly had I immersed myself in it for more than a couple of minutes when the doorbell rang.
    “Can you see who it is, Finn? Think it’s someone for downstairs.”
    This someone was for upstairs.
    It was Uncle Tor, who never visited us as a rule, even if he was working nearby, at Hesteskoen for instance, which we could see from the kitchen window, but today he had an errand, as he called it, standing there in his waiter’s suit with an alcoholic smile and his blond wavy locks smothered in Brylcreem.
    “Well, Finn, are you looking forward to Christmas?” “
    Yes, of course … erm it’s today, isn’t it.”
    “Yes, that’s right.”
    “Oh, it’s you, is it,” Mother said behind me, fidgeting with an earring, but not without a critical look, which must have registered – as did mine – that the guest was standing there without a single present in his empty hands, this was Uncle Tor, who could give me a pair of expensive skis one Christmas and not a sausage the next because he was broke, which he readily admitted with his pearly white charm. Uncle Tor was, according to Mother, the one member of the family who would never grow up, however old he became, and with some justice too, well, in fact he had been my age for as long as I had known him. He had dropped by to pick us up, he said, the car was waiting down in the street.
    “The car?”
    “Yes, a taxi.”
    Mother dashed over to the balcony window.
    “Are you out of your mind? Have you got a taxi waiting down there with the meter running?”
    “Yes, aren’t you ready?” Tor said innocently, surveying the wallpaper, the sofa and the Christmas tree with evident admiration, and perhaps the T.V. in particular, which Mother switched off, and then installed herself in front of the screen with her hands on her hips and a steely glare.
    “Is this something you and Bjarne thought up?”
    Then things took their usual course. Uncle Tor flopped down on the sofa, sighing and fidgeting with the crease in his terylene trousers and thrust out his hands as if trying to shake his watch bracelet further down his arm.
    “Yes,” he admitted, glancing at his watch.
    “We’ve already been through all this,” Mother said reprovingly.
    “Yes,” Uncle Tor said again, looking across at me, realising he ought to smile, did smile, then went back to being serious and continued to sit as if just being there was an argument in itself.
    Mother said nothing, but I could see from her face that she was not only in total control of the situation, but might also even have been enjoying it. She went into her room and fetched her purse.
    “You’ve got nothing to pay the taxi with, have you?”
    “Er … no,” Uncle Tor said, gazing at the wallpaper again.
    “Here you are. Say hello to the others and have a good time.”
    Tor was on his feet.
    “OK, Sis. You win, as always.”
    He gave her a thumbs-up, grabbed the note and headed for the hall. But then he remembered something.
    “Er … Could I have a word with the girl,