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chill me to the bones,” Alvar says. “Doesn’t it frighten you?”
    “No. It’s more like a gentle caress. ‘Not now,’ I tell him calmly, ‘not now, I’m in the middle of a book and I have to finish it.’”
    “There’s never a good time for dying,” Alvar says. “We know that we all have to and it’s a fate we carry with dignity as long as it doesn’t happen today. Or tomorrow, because there are a few things we were hoping to do.”
    “That’s how it is,” I reply. “However, I prefer to maintain a degree of contact with Death. It’s an exit that is always open. At night I play a game. I go to bed and feel my sleeping pill wash over me like a wave. Suddenly I’m on a beach and a man dressed in black comes rowing. I stand completely still waiting while he moors the boat. The water ripples over the stones, the old woodwork creaks.”
    “Do you get in?” Alvar asks me earnestly.
    “Yes, I do. The water is like a mirror. Death turns the boat around and rows with steady strokes. He knows where we are going; he knows these waters and he is confident.”
    “Is it night and is it dark?” Alvar wants to know.
    “No,” I say. “It’s twilight. And Death rows until we have reached the middle of the fjord; then he places the oars at the bottom of the boat and looks at me firmly. ‘Tomorrow is another day,’ he says. ‘Do you want it?’ I think about this for a long time. I have been in this world for more than fifty years; I suppose I can manage one more day. So he turns the boat around and rows me back, and I disembark. Back on dry land for a new day, which was never a certainty. Because every night I have to choose.”
    Alvar is silent for a long time. Again he looks at the paintings on my wall.
    “You also have a Lena Cronqvist,” he enthuses, pointing to a painting above the television.
    “I do. Do you know her?”
    “Of course. I pride myself on being well informed when it comes to modern art.”
    I eat more cheese; it tastes delicious. And while I eat, my thoughts are drifting. What do we people have in common? I wonder. Well, we’re born. Not because we want to be, but because someone else wanted it. We grow up and we don’t know where we’re going or what we’ll get. We think we can make our own decisions, that we can plan things. And so we can to a certain extent, but fate can be very capricious. A late-running bus can change a whole life—it can steer us toward another fate. We stumble on the curb, someone rushes to our aid, we catch someone’s eyes for a brief second and lightning strikes. A glance can lead to marriage and children... suddenly we’ve ended up in a totally different place from what we imagined. Alvar doesn’t have much, not at the moment. A flat, a job, and a very sensitive personality. This sensitivity, I decide, watching him secretly, will be his fate. He wants to be a good person; however, we don’t live in a world where good people are rewarded, but he doesn’t know that.
    Alvar follows each mouthful with his eyes. I finish eating and clear up after myself, then sit down in the living room and light a cigarette; Alvar follows me. He comes into the room hesitatingly and finds a chair for himself.
    “Please don’t let anything happen to Ole Krantz,” he says out of the blue. Again he looks down as if every time he says something he instantly regrets his words.
    I blow a column of smoke across the coffee table; it hovers there, swirling in the light from the lamp.
    “I’m not allowed to let anything happen to Krantz?”
    “No, because he’s a fine man. He doesn’t deserve it.”
    “My dear Alvar,” I say in a patronizing voice, “there can be no dramatic tension if I’m not allowed to make anything happen. I would have thought you understood that.”
    Again he is embarrassed. There are red patches on his throat, and his gray eyes blink.
    “You’re mine now,” I continue. “You’re not responsible for the other characters. I’m the one