Hunger’s Protagonist: Day One

We arrived in the city four days after the death of the king. His portrait was everywhere. The first time I saw him was over luggage-carousel number seven, which had been been cordoned off for maintenance work, and was draped in strips of lighting against wood that brought the whole area a golden hue except for his blue portrait on a static television screen. A train took us through green hills to the city and I wondered how long it had been since I had seen green grass. Such a simple thing but it had been absent for so long; how I had missed it. H— was not talking to me but looking at her phone. In the hotel lobby, just near the entrance, was another portrait of the king, this time framed, on a red-tablecloth and surrounded by three great white candles that burned steadily, not the least bit nuisanced by a breeze or even twitching at our arrival. We went to a Thai restaurant but it was not fun. I was too tired to be sad about how it was not fun. I spotted that H—’s order had meat floating in it, so it was returned, further souring her mood. There was much plastic fruit displayed in front of the window and a plastic cabbage amongst the plastic fruit, and there was straw hanging like the strips of lighting at luggage-carousel number seven and the name of the restaurant was strewn across the glass in an odd font from thirty years ago. The beer was cold, and the bottle was thick & strong like the pillars of the world; I wanted five of them. I wanted to sit there for a long time, to  become drunk, but the mood was off. Maybe I wished to become drunk because the mood was off. I had a bad feeling about things. Coarse string ran through the pak choi. The waitress looked at me, concerned. Instead I watched people walking past the construction site outside, overlayed by a opening hours and telephone number, and the cyclists with streetlights sparkling off their shiny helmets.

‘Our room doesn’t have a bathtub. I specifically booked a bathtub, I’m sure I did.’

‘Will you tell them when we get back?’

‘Yes.’ I thought it might cheer her up.

She was not speaking when we got back to our bathtub-less hotel room. She lay on the bed and looked at her phone. I looked at my phone, too, but everything seemed boring and frightfully sad, so I took some photographs out of the window. Down below was an intersection of tramlines. I could not see a portrait of the king, although I could see the trams and feel the trams. Briefly a couple stood in the orange fluorescent light of the closed sportswear shop; what were they saying? They disappeared into the night, away from the orange fluorescent light.

There were other people with us on the aeroplane and on the train. It was many hours ago but it felt longer. Our brief proximity on the final leg of the journey — awake in one country to sleep in another — endowed us with a useless camaraderie, or so I thought, and wondered where they were at that moment.  Because of my sadness, it was not difficult to imagine them right then, merry and full of life, putting their first Norwegian night into the town. I pointed the camera at H— to record our miserable moment—‘Don’t!’ she said, but it was too late. Some time later, we reconciled messily. ‘Tomorrow will be better,’ I said, full of hope, quite lonesome. We showered the day off us. There were still many thoughts in my head so while she snored quietly in a showery fragrance next to me, I watched an American T.V. show about a doctor or something; it was all in English with Norwegian subtitles; I tried to spot which word was which until sleep took me, too.