Sophie and Alberto seated themselves on a lawn in front of two large
buildings with ugly air vents and ventilation canals on the outside. A young
couple came walking out of one of the buildings. He was carrying a brown
briefcase and she had a red handbag slung over one shoulder. A car drove
along a narrow road in the background.
“What happened?” asked Sophie.
“We made it!”
“But where are we?”
“This is Oslo.”
“Are you quite sure?”
“Quite sure. One of these buildings is called Chateau Neuf, which means
‘the new palace.’ People study music there. The other is the Congregation
Faculty. It’s a school of theology. Further up the hill they study science and up
at the top they study literature and philosophy.”
“Are we out of Hilde’s book and beyond the major’s control?”
“Yes, both. He’ll never find us here.”
“But where were we when we ran through the woods?”
“While the major was busy crashing the financial adviser’s car into an
apple tree, we seized the chance to hide in the den. We were then at the
embryo stage. We were of the old as well as of the new world. But concealing
ourselves there was something the major cannot possibly have envisaged.”
“Why not?”
“He would never have let us go so easily. As it was, it went like a dream.
Of course, there’s always the chance that he was in on it himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was he who started the white Mercedes. He may have exerted
himself to the utmost to lose sight of us. He was probably utterly exhausted
after everything that had been going on . . .”
By now the young couple were only a few yards away. Sophie felt a bit
awkward, sitting on the grass with a man so much older than herself. Besides,
she wanted someone to confirm what Alberto had said.
She got up and went over to them
“Excuse me, would you mind telling me the name of this street?”
But they ignored her completely.
Sophie was so provoked that she asked them again.
“It’s customary to answer a person, isn’t it?”
The young man was clearly engrossed in explaining something to his
companion:
“Contrapuntal form operates on two dimensions, horizontally, or
melodically, and vertically, or harmonically.
There will always be two or more melodies sounding together . . .”
“Excuse me for interrupting, but. . .”
“The melodies combine in such a way that they develop as much as
possible, independently of how they sound against each other. But they have
to be concordant. Actually it’s note against note.”
How rude! They were neither deaf nor blind. Sophie tried a third time,
standing ahead of them on the path blocking their way,
She was simply brushed aside.
“There’s a wind coming up,” said the woman.
Sophie rushed back to Alberto.