They get up in the early evening. They shower and dress and go outside, they walk closer to each other, even more closely, it really is possible. It’s because we love each other, they say. It’s because we’re so passionate. We’re enthralled by the power of love.

‘I’ve never felt like this about anyone.’

‘Me neither.’

‘Kiss me!’

‘Never leave me!’

‘If you leave me, I’ll kill you!’

There is savagery and passion as in great world literature. This is the unchained passion they have read about, the dream of total union, the obsession about which so much has been written, they know, but which brings with it fear and horror too, a kind of death.

From one hotel to another in big cities abroad before the next day’s reconciliation. Perhaps it was necessary at the start, to cleanse, have it all out, get even. Confess in order to mend, repair. Drink to find the courage to tackle the knots, fight their way through them to forgiveness and reconciliation. Trembling, sobbing, utterly exhausted. They fling their arms around the other’s neck and promise fidelity until death. They know, they have realised yet again that neither can live without the other. It was necessary, inevitable at the start, but then it doesn’t stop. It continues, it grows, it becomes their hallmark. Because they are not like other people. Their love, their story isn’t like that of other people. It isn’t ordinary like the others. They may look like any other couple in love, but it is an optical illusion. For them it is a matter of life or death and it can be no other way. It is impossible to explain to those who haven’t experienced it for themselves.

They go out and celebrate with champagne.

‘We got married today!’ And they get special service. They get married in Istanbul, in Casablanca, in Paris, in Munich. The champagne arrives in an ice bucket. In Istanbul they eat lobster with the champagne, by the harbour on the Galata side, with a view of Asia. In Paris they eat salmon with their champagne. The bar of the Casablanca Hyatt, where Bogart and Bergman were in love, is so expensive that they only have nuts with their champagne.

‘We got married today, champagne!’

It arrives in an ice bucket and the waiter takes a picture of them.

he loves him even though he is small and insecure. She sees him, he is small and insecure. But she can’t tell him that she sees him, how small, how insecure he is and that she loves him regardless, because he doesn’t want her to see it. She hides her knowledge in order to protect him. And so she can’t say what she would like to have said to make things entirely clear and possibly easier:

‘I love you even though you are small and insecure, even though for some reason you feel offended.’

He can say it himself or he can write it: I am a fragile human being.

Yes, at times he will do so, he will write: I know I can be impossible, but . . . it says on the paper and it looks supreme, like an insight, as if it is something he has mastered.

So now what? What use is that information ultimately to her, she is no further advanced, except now she also feels ashamed. Outside the sun is shining, why doesn’t she do something constructive, something healthy, go for a walk, read a book, work. Just because he makes stupid choices, it doesn’t follow that she has to. If he is deceiving her, then let him deceive her, it will come out eventually and then she will catch him. Just because he is being an idiot, it doesn’t follow that she has to be one. Even if she found the information she was looking for, she still couldn’t stop him, but she can stop herself from making poor choices, from demeaning herself. Ida! Take a look at yourself! Outside the sun is shining, the sky is blue while you are inside, sitting by the phone, trapped by thoughts of Arnold with another. If you were on your deathbed, Ida, watching your life flash past, what would you think about the time you sat by the telephone, calling total strangers, asking pointless questions, which got you nowhere except deeper into futility. Trapped, impotent, surrendered, paralysed. It’s wasted time, Ida, shame on you! Go out into the world and do something, live, don’t shame yourself to death.

‘Doesn’t it make you angry?’ they want to know.

No, that’s the thing. She shakes her head. It is as if the blood has been drained from her veins, she just feels weak. Nor would he tolerate it if she were to get angry, he would leave and she can’t risk that because then she will die.

‘But perhaps he’ll change?’ she asks them.

They smile and exchange knowing glances.

‘How old is he?’

‘Forty-two.’

‘Do you think he can change?’

The honest answer – that he will never change – hangs in the air. But she can’t say it. It is impossible. She believes in love, she has to believe in it, there is nothing else to believe in.

Is he serious? Is that what it looks like to him? That she is flirting, leading people on? Or does he just want to keep her for himself, to control her, because not being able to control her is unbearable for him? If his own emotions have gone haywire, why doesn’t he try to analyse them the way he analyses everything else – after all, he is an expert in textual analysis and theories – rather than give in to them? Or does it genuinely look like that to him. As if she is flaunting herself, as if anyone could have her? They will argue about this for years.

Close to each other on the plane. Close to each other through the arrivals lounge and out into the air. Close, close to each other through the streets, in cafés, in restaurants. Closer to each other than ever before, we will grow from this, you’ll see. We can only grow closer, more intimate, if that is even possible, perhaps he actually believes it? Every cloud has a silver lining. Couples who manage to stick together for better or for worse, tell each other everything, they forgive and accept. Just look at us now! Even better friends than before. Why should an affair make any difference, destroy the precious relationship we have? From now on they will tell each other everything. They are solid. Cheers, Ida!

Professor Twig starts to cry. At the age of only sixteen he could boast of having read the four great Norwegian writers. ‘Read the four greats!’ he said to his sister, who was studying Home Economics and had been taught that the four greats were onion, leeks, potatoes and carrots. It is not until now as he is nearing fifty that Professor Twig begins to have doubts. Perhaps onion, leeks, potatoes and carrots really are more useful than Ibsen, Bjørnson, Lie and Kielland, he muses, then stops himself. What use is literature to Professor Twig now? He no longer knows if he can hope for a miracle.

They book a weekend trip to northern Spain to recover. Arnold misses his plane to Oslo, and Ida can hear why in his voice. He denies it, but when their plane to Spain is delayed in Copenhagen due to fog and they are sitting in the airport, drinking, her fears are confirmed and she thinks: he is never going to change. If he can do that after they have been to war together. If he can do that now.

Did he not see their relationship the way she saw it, if he was willing to risk it all to fuck a student? Or, more likely, he thought about it the way she thought about it and moreover he was so sure of it, its rare quality, so confident was he that he didn’t think it could ever be at risk, that it might come crashing down.