‘How do you propose to get hold of four hundred—’
‘The bank.’
‘Os Savings Bank?’
‘No, no.’ He laughed. ‘They’re too small for this. A city bank. DnB.’
‘And why would they loan you four hundred mil for this …?’ I didn’t actually say lunacy, but it was pretty obvious what I was thinking.
‘Because we’re not going to start a limited company. We’re going to start an SL.’
‘SL?’
‘A Shared Liability company. People in the village don’t have a lot of cash. What they do have are the farms and the land they live on. With an SL they don’t need to put up a single krone to come along for the ride. And everyone who’s in, the great and the small, has the same share and makes the same profit. They can all just sit back and let their property do the work for them. The bankers will be drooling at the mouth for the chance to finance this whole thing because they’ve never been offered better security than a whole bloody village!’
I scratched my head. ‘You mean, if the whole thing goes to hell, then—’
‘Then each investor is liable only for his own share. If there are a hundred of us, and the company goes bankrupt with a debt of a hundred thousand, then all you’re liable for, you and the rest of the investors, is a thousand kroner each. Even if some of the investors can’t manage the thousand, that’s not your problem, it’s the creditors’ problem.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Beautiful, isn’t it? So the more that are involved, the less the individual risk. But of course that also means the less they earn when this thing really takes off.’
It was a lot to take on board. A type of company where you don’t have to lay out a single krone and just rake it in, if everything goes according to plan. And if it all goes to hell, the only thing you’re liable for is your own share.
‘OK,’ I said, trying to figure out where the catch might be. ‘So why invite people to an investors’ meeting when they aren’t going to be investing anything?’
‘Because “investor” sounds a lot more impressive than just “participant”. Don’t you think?’ Carl hooked his thumbs into his belt and put on a funny voice: ‘I ain’t just a farmer, I’m a hotel investor, don’t you know.’ He laughed loudly. ‘It’s pure psychology. When half the village has signed up the rest won’t be able to stand the thought of their neighbours buying themselves Audis and calling themselves hotel owners and not being a part of it themselves. Better to risk losing a few kroner, so long as your neighbour does the same.’
I nodded slowly. He’d probably got the psychology about right there.
‘The project is solid. The tricky bit is to get the train rolling.’ Carl kicked at the ground beneath us. ‘Get the first few to commit, people who can show the others they think the project’s attractive enough to want to be a part of. If we manage that, then everyone will want to climb on board and then the thing will be rolling along under its own steam.’
‘OK. And how are you going to persuade the first to come on board?’
‘When I can’t even manage to convince my own brother, you mean?’ He smiled that fine, open smile with the slightly sad eyes. ‘One’ll do,’ said Carl before I could respond.
‘And that one is …?’
‘The bellwether. Aas.’
Of course. The old council chairman. Mari’s father. He’d been calling meetings to order for more than twenty years, run this solidly Labour commune with a firm hand through good times and bad until one day he’d decided that was enough. Aas had to be over seventy by now and busied himself mostly at home on the farm, although now and then he would write something in the local newspaper, the Os Daily, and people read what he wrote. And even those who didn’t agree with Aas to begin with would start looking at things in a new light. Light shed through the old chairman’s way with words, his wisdom and his undeniable knack of always making the right decisions. People really did believe that the plans for a national highway bypassing the village would never have seen the light of day if Aas had still been chairman, that he would have explained to them how this would ruin everything, deprive the village of the extra income the through-traffic brought them, wipe an entire local community off the map and turn it into a deserted ghost town with just a few subsidised farmers close to retiring age still clinging on. And someone had suggested that Aas – and not the current chairman – lead a delegation to the capital to talk some sense into the transport minister.
I spat. Which, for your information, is the opposite of the good ole boy’s slow nodding of the head and means that you do not agree.
‘So you think Aas is just dying to risk his farm and his land on a spa hotel high up on top of the bare mountain? That he wants to put his fate in the hands of the guy who cheated on his daughter and then ran off abroad?’
Carl shook his head. ‘You don’t get it. Aas liked me, Roy. I wasn’t just his future son-in-law, I was the son he never had.’
‘Everybody liked you, Carl. But when you screw her best friend …’
Carl gave me a warning look and I lowered my voice and checked that Shannon – who was squatting in the heather and studying something – was out of earshot.
‘… then you slip a few places down the hit parade.’
‘Aas never knew about what happened between me and Grete,’ said Carl. ‘All he knows is that his daughter dumped me.’
‘Oh?’ I said in disbelief. And then a little less disbelieving once I thought about it. Mari – always very conscious of appearances – had naturally preferred the official version of her break-up with the village heart-throb, this being that she had dumped him, the unspoken assumption being that she was aiming higher than the mountain farm boy Opgard.
‘Straight after Mari broke up with me, I was summoned by Aas, and he told me how disappointed he was,’ said Carl. ‘He wondered if me and Mari couldn’t make up again somehow. Told me how him and his wife had been through some rough patches too, but they’d stuck it out now for over forty years. I said I would like that too, but right now I needed to get away for a while. He said he understood and gave me a few suggestions. My exam results at school were good, Mari had told him, and maybe he could arrange for a scholarship to a university in the States.’
‘Minnesota? Was that Aas?’
‘He had some contacts with the Norwegian–American Society there.’
‘You never mentioned that.’
Carl shrugged. ‘I was embarrassed. I’d been unfaithful to his daughter and now I was letting him help me in all good faith. But I think he had his reasons, he probably hoped I’d return with a university degree and win back the princess and half the kingdom, like the boy in the fairy story.’
‘So now you want him to help you again?’
‘Not me,’ said Carl. ‘The village.’
‘Naturally. The village. And exactly when was it you started having these heart-warming thoughts about the village?’
‘And just exactly when did you become so cold-hearted and cynical?’
I smiled. I could have told him the date and the hour.