Stella Descending by Linn Ullmann Read Free Book Online Page A

Martin.”
    I felt a twinge of uneasiness. It might have been better to say goodbye there and then. There’s no denying that I looked forward to seeing Stella at the hospital, but that she should show up at my apartment, that she and I should sit on my gray sofa drinking coffee and chatting, seemed at that moment completely unlikely. In my mind the difficulties multiplied. Would I have to serve something with the coffee? What would we talk about? She was only twenty-five at the time. What did one say to a twenty-five-year-old? What would Money say? Maybe I was just a pathetic old man. I had never had many close friends; there had only been Isak Skald, really, and over the years he and I had developed a set of unwritten rules to govern our friendship. He called me Grutt, for example, and I called him Skald. It’s not that we were especially formal or polite with each other, this was simply what we did. We were careful when we discussed personal matters. Since he was my doctor, it was only natural for me to tell him about my physical ailments; and just as naturally, he responded by offering medical advice. But to save our friendship from being confused with a straightforward doctor-patient relationship, he informed me of
his
physical ailments, too. Since we both suffered from an enlarged prostate, this was an obvious topic of conversation. Occasionally we would talk about his wife, Else, that marvelous woman with the hands that could change a man’s life, but all in all I would say that we talked more about our prostates. And I don’t think we ever mentioned my Gerd.
    Skald had heard that Stella and I were having these daily bedside chats, that she sometimes brought her lunch to my room instead of eating with her colleagues. Was it possible, he wondered, that I was infatuated with this young woman? I made it clear that I found such insinuations offensive. If Stella were to have coffee with me at my apartment, this was exactly the sort of comment I was worried about. When you got right down to it, there was no good reason for Stella and me to see each other. I had nothing to offer. I felt vaguely shy when she was around, and it bothered me. Shy and ashamed, even. As if I were seeing myself, my face and my body, with her eyes. These clumsy hands of mine with their stiff fingers, not nimble enough.
    Once Stella and I were having a snack in my room. She kept fingering the silver locket that hung on a chain around her neck. It had been her mother’s. Finally the clasp came undone and the locket slid to the floor. Stella dropped onto all fours.
    “Dammit,” she muttered, “dammit, I can’t see it.” But, after groping around for a while: “Here it is! Found it! Under the bed!” She stood up, hair a mess, a big smile on her face. “Got it!”
    She brushed off her uniform and handed me the silver locket. It was so tiny in my hand. I looked at it lying there, glinting on my palm, and thought what an insult it was for something so small and silvery and feminine to be put into an ancient paw like mine. She sat on the edge of the bed with her back to me, gathered up her long hair, and bent her head, baring her long white neck. I looked away.
    “The clasp is so tricky. Could you fasten it for me?”
    I looked at the necklace between my fingers. I looked at the nape of her neck. I looked at my hands.
    “I’m not very good with itty-bitty things like this.” I tried a little laugh.
    “Sure you are, it’s easy,” she said. “It’s only hard to fasten if you’re the one wearing it.”
    Face turned away, hair gathered up, she told me how this particular clasp worked. I looked at the nape of her neck and caught a faint whiff of perspiration and of something else I couldn’t put my finger on, a not unpleasant but rather spicy odor that always seemed to cling to Stella. Gently I laid the chain around her neck, my hands trembling, all the cuff links I was no longer capable of clipping to my shirtsleeves flashing through my