Some mistake

Nils left the house at nine o'clock precisely. More punctual than the sunrise, Nils took no small delight in the seasons that varied around him. He would sample the air and the light at the same point in the earth's rotation each day, and could thus feel summer's approach and guess at winter's onslaught.

He sniffed, his wide nostrils dilating to let in the air that today slouched over from the direction of Tansberg. The light was brighter today; Nils smiled, as he loved the spring and saw every sign of it as a blessing. The time in which diurnal creatures could sport and build had been extended by some six minutes since yesterday, he thought, picturing the almanack in his mind's eye.

He pulled his greatcoat around him as he stepped onto the snow-covered pavement. The flurries had finished during the night, but persistent flakes still tapped on the thick woollen garment. The month was thus far unseasonably cold, although the weather had suggested these past few days that it might soon break.

An especially bitter personal winter was thawing for Nils. His profession was that of manager of a ragtag assemblage of joiners and plumbers, that his superior, a town councillor, imagined was a construction outfit; despite their apparent disorganization they were brought together by the respect and friendship (not, it must be stressed, at all an unsuitable relationship between governor and governed) that Nils showed to every employee on every day of work. Under his direction they never failed to make a decent fist of most simple, small-town jobs.

However, in late autumn an accident involving unsecured guide-ropes had caused Nils to be struck with a sturdy wooden beam, and he had lost consciousness for three days. On waking, he had not been able to remember the events leading up to the accident at at all; severe concussion and its after-effects had afflicted him for many weeks afterwards; Nils felt he had yet to fully recover.

The firm had been generous to a fault, and had provided for him during his convalescence. A naturally sociable man, Nils was nonetheless saddened that no representative had ever called on him; nor had any of his underlings, with whom he had had such warm, reciprocated relationships at work, enquired after his health. But he understood the natural revulsion at another's infirmity, and did not bear a grudge easily. So he expected to stay at home another month or two so that he might fully recover; then he would reappear at the offices with renewed vigour.

As he turned the corner onto the Rallarvei he brushed shoulders with a young gentleman. Nils thought nothing of it; the young man looked up and then, seeing Nils, touched his cap and said, grinning: "Good to see you, sir." Perplexed, Nils smiled in response. Closeted for so long, and then accustomed to walking streets that had been swept clean by the arctic winds, his once well-developed social faculties had wilted somewhat, as though he were reading a guide to manners that had bleached and weathered over the past few months. So he was in a sense unsurprised at his surprise, at how he had been greeted. Besides, the gentleman had been quite young, and so what had struck Nils as a faintly gauche, overaffectionate greeting was probably precisely that.

In his healthier days, Nils had made regular trips to the local grocer's. He had schooled with Jan Anderssen, the owner, and was always pleased to see him. Each visit had been almost entirely the same as the previous one, and although he had not been there for some months he could still remember every item he usually bought. So it was a surprise to find that Anderssen's store had changed hands while Nils had kept himself indoors.

As Nils entered the woodpanelled shop, he was greeted from afar by the new owner's fat face. Topped with greasy hair plastered to his head like a skullcap of black leather, and festooned with a billowing black moustache, it beamed across the counter at him. A wiry young smudge of flour and stock-room dust moved in the shadows of the shop. He was fourteen, perhaps fifteen, and sloped round the room as if to leave his feet behind. As Nils approached the counter, the boy began unloading sacks and packages of produce from a wheelbarrow onto the shelves.

No less friendly than Herr Anderssen, the new fellow greeted Nils warmly and asked him his opinion of the weather.

"All is as it should be," Nils said gnomically, and thought it worth repeating. "As it should be."

"I quite agree, sir," said the shopkeeper cheerily, barely listening to himself, let alone his customer. "And I wouldn't be surprised if spring were fast approaching...." And so his patter continued, leading gently through enquiries about Nils' habits and preferences into the subject of what he wished to obtain from the store that day. Nils felt immersed in his talk as if in hot, steaming porridge, and began ordering the fellow around the shop as confident as a customer ever were; the shopkeeper, in his turn, fetched from the shelves behind him with equal aplomb.

However, Nils had only reached the third item on the list when the shopkeeper said: "Very good, Herr Haaland. And next?"

Nils stopped, and looked puzzled. "You are mistaken, sir. Who is this Herr Haaland of whom you speak?"

The shopkeeper's face darkened under his greasy curls. "My apologies, sir," he stammered, looking askance at his assistant who had paused momentarily in his stacking of goods. Suddenly the shopkeeper called out "Jakob! Get back to work! I want to see those shelves full by midday! I must indeed have been mistaken," he continued, addressing Nils once again. "Do you wish to buy anything else?"

Unsettled, Nils realized he had entirely forgotten his list of groceries, his weekly routine upset. Whatever force had been driving his purchases now left him, and after adding some smoked fish and cabbage to his only partly full bag he paid for the goods and hurried out of the shop. The door clattered shut behind him.

Nils chewed on his thoughts as he began to head home. Who was Haaland? Had he moved here these past few months? Was the physical resemblance truly so strong between them? The youth, on the Rallarvei: perhaps he had thought Nils to be this Haaland fellow. Maybe the Haalands were relations; Nils knew of none in his family, but some languishing branch of its tree might have dropped settlers into the northern farms....

As he mulled this over he suddenly realized that a young couple, trudging towards him, were looking straight at him, meeting the gaze he now found himself returning. He was dressed very finely, like a town dignitary, and Nils wondered who he might be; she was prim and self-conscious, but Nils could not comment further than that on women's clothing, even in winter.

"Well, bless my soul!" exclaimed the dapper young gentleman. "Herr Haaland: is it really you? You're looking fine today, isn't he, Inge?"

With a brittle, cheery air, the woman who was presumably called Inge (although what accounting did there seem to be any more for names?) chimed: "Yes, indeed! I think this fresh air is doing all of us the power of good!"

"Please!" Nils cried. "You are both of you mistaken. I assure you that you have confused me with someone else. Your well-wishes are as much appreciated as they are misdirected. Now, good-day to you both." And he pushed his way between them and stomped off down the road.

He would go to the town hall, he decided. Mentally leafing through his address book—Nils had a fine mind for such details—he remembered one or two acquaintances that might appreciate the quandary in which he found himself, and would let him look through the most recent pages of the matrikkel, at least. He might then check the records for a Herr Haaland. It was unlikely that the gentleman had moved into the small town, but perhaps he was a new arrival in one of the smallholdings or bruker dotted around. The situation had become wholly embarrassing to Nils. Armed with a bruksnummer he could find and confront Herr Haaland, and attempt some sort of resolution. With a flash of humour, he wondered if Herr Haaland might be persuaded to grow a beard to make it easier to distinguish them both.

As he mounted the steps to the records office he saw, through the panes in the door, an official scurrying to meet him. Nils was struck with a sudden premonition that was ghastly to him, and he saw the name form on the lips of the servile face that approached his own.

"Herr Haa-"

Nils' delicate temperament was finally smashed to pieces. He thrust his bag of shopping into the arms of the official, pushing him back through the doorframe. "Get away!" he roared. "Jubelidiot! I am surrounded by fools! Do I look so much like this Herr Haaland that you must pester me so? To hell with you!" And he leapt away from the entrance hall and ran down the road.

Careering through the snow on the Rallarvei, Nils was pursued by real and imagined appeals for Mr Haaland to stop and talk awhile. Enquiries about his health mingled with clanging mistakes of his identity, and he bounded up the stairs of his house with Haaland, Haaland in his ears. Almost as soon as he landed on the top step his wife, who had been peering out of the window, clearly fretting, swung the door open and tried unsuccessfully to usher her husband in without stepping into the cold herself.

"Nils, my darling," Bergitta cried "You are so late! I did not expect you to be out more than an hour. And in your condition! I was worrying terribly. I should never have let you leave in the first place. Let me call Maren. She can make you some soup, and you can warm yourself in front of the fire."

But wild-eyed, gasping for breath, he turned to his wife. "Dear lady," he gasped. "Who is Nils? You are, I am afraid, sadly mistaken. Sadly mistaken." This said, Nils Haaland bounded up the stairs and into his room.