Janne Drangsholt - The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter

Thus, I was ready with my biggest smile and my most positive vibrations when Mafia Suit stomped off in frustration and Hair Dye slowly turned toward number 113.

“Hi!” I hollered into the speaker in my most chipper voice, waving to the window. “Privyet!”

Hair Dye showed no sign of having seen or heard me, but used a weary hand motion to indicate that any paperwork should be placed in the metal compartment. I obediently inserted my passport, certificate of valid travel insurance, the invitation letter issued by Saint Petersburg State University, and my fully filled-out application form and barely managed to yank my fingers free before he pulled the compartment back to his side of the window with a sharp metallic bang.

I regretted not having followed my doctor’s admonitions to eat better: more meat, more vegetables, more of everything. It was probably my inadequate diet that was making me feel so light-headed and weird. Sometimes the dizziness followed me into my dreams.

“Five days,” I suddenly heard the speaker announce in a crackling bark.

It startled me.

“Excuse me?”

“The visa takes five days. One, two, three, four, five.”

“That won’t work. I’m leaving in five days. One, two, three—”

He cut me short with a shrug.

“But I read about something online called an expedited visa. That’s what I want.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Yes, there is. It says so right here.”

I pulled out the printout I’d brought with me.

“See, right here? If I pay six hundred kroner, I can get it same day. It says so right here. This is from your Web page.”

With an irritated look, he held up his hand: five fingers.

“But the expedited visa—”

“Doesn’t exist!”

“I have money. See? Six hundred kroner in cash. Just like it says online.”

I held up my bills and smiled hopefully.

“ You decide?”

“No. But online it—”

He slammed his fist down on his desk so hard that everything on it bounced into the air.

“MOSCOW decides! Not the Internet!”

“But—”

Clang!

The metal drawer popped out containing a receipt. Then Hair Dye moved his finger to a red button on the left side of his desk. He pushed it hard and I closed my eyes and held my breath, waiting for the trapdoor to the crocodile pit to open. Instead, the man in the black leather jacket tapped on my shoulder and shook his head as if to say nothing could be done.

“You’re not in Norway now,” Leather Jacket said. “Now in Russia.”

“Right,” I said, proceeding slowly toward the exit, but Hair Dye stopped me, barking something in Russian while thumping one hand on his bulletproof glass and indicating with the other hand that I was an idiot.

“Take the receipt to the cashier,” Leather Jacket explained.

I peered around looking for anything that might resemble a cash register and eventually chose the window with the most Post-It notes on the glass, where the brusque lady handed me a new receipt.

“I don’t want a visa,” I said, waving the receipt. “Can I get my passport back instead?”

“Five days.”

“But I don’t want to go to Russia! I’ve changed my mind.”

“Five days,” she repeated, shaking her head to indicate that I would indeed be going. “You go.”

A gesture that was repeated by the chair of the department when I told her about my problems.

“You can change your ticket. Take a later flight and go via Oslo. You’re going to Russia, and you’re going to set up a cooperation agreement. Simple as that.”

Even Bjørnar shook his head at me, but that was because he was laughing, in a way I hadn’t seen him laugh for a long time. It gave me hope. Maybe I should go to Russia, if for nothing else than at least getting some good stories out of it, stories that could save my marriage, even though I had plunged us into financial ruin.

“But I’m scared of ending up in one of those little cages they have in their courtrooms.”

“You’re scared of a lot of things,” he said. “If you go to Russia, you might actually get so scared that your fear flips and reverses direction.”

“You mean, like, it might ease up some?”

“Maybe.”

I lay in bed and mulled that over. The thought of going to Russia caused an iron fist to squeeze my heart like never before, and my scalp itched so much I was sure I must have lice. But at the same time Bjørnar had put an idea in my head. Maybe this was a good thing? Maybe I just needed to be more scared than I’d ever been before. Maybe that would help me develop some kind of superpower.

I tried my all-out best to avoid Frank, who I knew must be awfully disappointed about losing his chance to internationalize, but the day before I left he succeeded in tracking me down.

“You weaseled your way onto the committee,” he said resentfully.

“I didn’t weasel my way onto anything. I—”

“ No one knows as much about bilateral cooperation as I do. No one!”

“That’s probably debatable, but the point is that I don’t even want to go. But I have to. In part because of this whole bad-cop strategy that—”

He interrupted me by holding one finger up right in front of my nose and glaring at me.

“You see this?”

“Yes.”

“Does it stink?”

“Not particularly.”

“That’s weird, because I think something smells fishy here, very fishy!”

I sighed.

“Look, I wish you could go in my place, but it’s not up to me. And if you’re going to blame anyone, you should be looking at Peter and Ingvill. They’re the ones who started this whole bad-cop strategy. You know that, right?”

“VERY FISHY,” Frank roared into my face, then spun around and marched down the hallway.

“So I’m going,” I told Bjørnar that same evening.

“Yes, I’m aware of that.”

We stood there, surrounded by cardboard boxes.

Not that we ever talked about them. We’d stopped talking about anything that had to do with houses or our home life. Which is why neither of us mentioned that I would be coming back shortly before our move.

Even though we were nowhere near selling the current house.

Even though neither of us remembered why we’d even wanted to move or why we’d gone and bought that enormous old house that we’d only been inside once and could hardly remember in the first place.

Not to mention that lately I’d started realizing that most of the families in Astrid Lindgren’s books weren’t actually all that happy. I mean, come to think of it, you really only found those wonderful Christmases in the books set on Troublemaker Street and in Noisy Village. Other than that she mostly wrote about kids who were parentless. Or their mothers were working themselves to death and their fathers were alcoholics.

So I was a little puzzled about what I’d actually been thinking.

Meanwhile I was going to Russia.

“Bye,” I said, waiting for some kind of well wishes from Bjørnar or maybe something I could draw strength from.

“Bye,” he said.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and walked into a different darkness.

A Tehomic darkness I would descend down into and maybe learn how to manage. Deep, deep down.

But there was one bright spot. Since I’d changed my tickets so late, I also had to upgrade to first class. And first class meant one thing: champagne.

Not to celebrate, I told myself. But because I can. So chill out, Tehom!

I practiced my drink order several times to myself, but ended up hoodwinked by the man next to me.

“Coffee and a macaroon, thanks,” he said.

“Coffee and a macaroon, thanks,” I repeated.