Free Doppler by Erlend Loe Page B

won’t work without the amplifier of course, and it would be daft without the speakers, but you can have the CD/ DVD player. And I would appreciate it if you would take my son’s DVD collection while you’re at it. He has the full range including Bob the Builder, Pingu, the Teletubbies, Thomas the Tank Engine and more. I’ll guarantee any modern child would be thrilled to have it. Have you got kids yourself?
    I’ve got two, Roger says proudly and tells me their names and shows me photos he keeps in his wallet.
    Good for you, I say, wondering where the box for the CD/DVD player and the warranty are.
    I give Roger instructions on how to find my tent and he promises to visit me up there, and when he leaves I stand on the terrace and wave to the taxi as it disappears from view.
    Straight afterwards Gregus wakes up and comes downstairs to watch a film as he often does in the morning before going to nursery school.
    Sorry, Gregus, I say. There’s no film today. During the night a thief came and stole the DVD player and all your films.
    Of course, he begins to cry and insists on us phoning the police. Without a moment’s hesitation I grab the phone and pretend I’m making a dramatic call to the police and in the conversation let drop that they haven’t caught him yet, but they have a full-scale search on. After putting down the phone I tell him I think this thief was quite a kind thief. A bit like the robbers in Cardamom Town. Basically good at heart. Let him keep the DVD player, I say. He needed it more than we did. And you can start saving up for a new one, I say. Anyway, you would soon have grown out of the films you had. Chin up. Look upon this as an opportunity, as a new beginning. As a Norwegian poet once said: It’s the dream. Slipping into an unfamiliar bay in the early morning. That’s what we’re doing now, Gregus, I say. That’s what we’re doing today.
    I deliver Gregus and the fruit to the nursery and then jog up to the forest to show Bongo I’m still alive. He’s lying outside the tent, wet and cold, and I invoke higher powers and say it will never happen again, but Bongo is disappointed and fed up and remains aloof and dismissive until I have rubbed his fur for an hour in front of the fire and hummed snatches of old songs from our rich folk music heritage. Then we both fall asleep and when we awake it’s already afternoon and we have to run to get to the nursery before it closes. I have neither the time nor the heart to tether Bongo at the edge of the forest, so he comes along. The nursery person rolls her eyes as I apologise for being late, but I quickly gather up Gregus’s things and extricate myself from the situation without any further conflict and with some elegance, I think. This is Bongo, I say to Gregus after we have put a bit of distance between ourselves and the nursery. True he’s a moose, but nonetheless he’s a good friend of mine and therefore of yours too, I explain. It doesn’t take Gregus and Bongo long to get to know each other. Mentally they are the same age and they chase each other in and out of the trees as we head up the mountainside. When Gregus is tired he’s allowed to sit on Bongo’s back while I walk ahead holding Bongo by a rope. From a distance we probably look like a slice of bible history. Joseph, a strange donkey and a tiny, child-like Maria.
    Gregus is a woodsman like his father. It’s innate. The hunter-gatherer instincts are deeply rooted in his genes as they are in mine. We grill meat on a spit and relax, resting against Bongo’s flanks, but as the hour of children’s TV approaches I notice that his body begins to twitch. He hasn’t got a watch and he can’t tell the time anyway, but still the impulse is there, it’s physical and tangible. He knows that there’s something going on, but is unable to express it in words. I say nothing, and children’s TV comes and goes without Gregus knowing what has come and gone. Gradually his unease passes and he