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STIG SÆTERBAKKEN
Translated by Seán Kinsella
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While I sat there listening to her I noticed something peculiar about her lips, how they stuck to each other at a particular point at the far corner of one side of her mouth when she spoke. This detail, insignificant as it was, now caught my attention in such a way that I lost sight of everything else. I couldn’t manage to take my eyes off it. It bothered me to look at it, all the same I let myself become completely absorbed by it. There was something about it that didn’t fit … was that why I was so fascinated? … the rest of her, something that didn’t match, no, absolutely not, with what I otherwise took as being her, or rather her outward face. It was as though that small, and to a certain extent innocent, defect did something to her expression, gave her a certain quality of … well, mercilessness, completely lacking in compassion, as if she was ready to clear every obstacle out of her way by whatever means necessary. It frightened me when I saw it. It was like I was sitting face to face with a superior power. I looked at her, closely examined her whole face, which I had studied with pleasure only a few minutes before … but it seemed as though it had changed, and now I thought it was a wonder that I hadn’t noticed it right away, this cool, calculating, yes, cynical feature of her mouth. It wasn’t possible not to see it. And what I had initially considered a disruptive element, a blemish, was now revealed as the very thing that, in reality, gave her her own particular appearance. I stared at her mouth: unmistakeably hers. And eventually … unavoidably perhaps … there was something nasty about it, the slow, sort of lazy motion at the corner of her mouth … it was as though I was hearing the sound of them, her lips, every time they tore free of one another, again and again, for every word she spoke. And it was only when I realized that she had been sitting staring at me a while without saying anything that I managed to tear my eyes away from that fold of skin … only to discover that I hadn’t the slightest notion of anything appropriate to say …
Once again it was she who saved us from an embarrassing silence.
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