The boy with the golden trousers

The boy with the golden trousers is the affectionate nickname Trond Sander’s wife and sister used for him, a teasing image of his apparent good fortune. The name begins as a private joke shared by two women who loved him; after both are gone, it becomes a touchstone for his changed sense of self, recalling a person who once seemed certain of his luck and contrasting him with the less familiar man he now feels himself to be.

Origin and Meaning

The nickname emerges in Trond’s recollection of his sister and wife. His sister could not get a fire going even with dry wood, newspaper, and a stove that drew well; the contrast with their father’s effortless skill belongs to the same domestic memory in which Trond acknowledges missing her. She died of cancer three years earlier, after a diagnosis that came too late. As time passed, she and Trond’s wife became close friends, often speaking by telephone in the evenings about world affairs and, sometimes, about Trond.

The two women would laugh over the boy with the golden trousers. Trond thinks his sister may have coined the nickname first. Its image suggests that, whenever he put his hand into his pocket, shining coins would appear in endless supply: luck rendered as a playful, inexhaustible resource. Their laughter was affectionate rather than malicious. Trond describes himself as serious, but concedes that seriousness can be overdone, and accepts that the women had reason to tease him.

Bereavement and Self-Perception

The nickname gains a more painful resonance because Trond’s wife and sister died within the same month. After their deaths, he lost interest in talking to people and no longer knew what to say to them. His withdrawal to a remote life is connected both to that bereavement and to his desire to be near the forest, a part of his earlier life that he had missed. In this context, the name preserves the voice of the two people who could turn his seriousness into shared humor.

Trond also connects the nickname directly to luck: he says he has been lucky, and notes that he has said so before. It is not presented as proof that his life has been untouched by loss. Instead, the women’s joke holds together two truths about him: he has felt fortunate, and he has suffered the absence of the people with whom he could laugh about that fortune.

The Name as a Measure of Change

While working with Lars, Trond finds himself surprised and worried that he depends on another person’s encouragement to continue a necessary job. He describes a change from the man he knew and relied on, the boy with the golden trousers, who could produce shining coins whenever he reached into his pocket, into someone much less familiar, uncertain what kind of rubbish he might find there. He wonders how long the transformation has been under way and suggests it may have begun three years earlier, linking the change to the period of bereavement without claiming a simpler explanation.

Later, Trond invokes the name again while imagining the solitude he wants: manageable daily tasks, clear beginnings and endings, work done with his hands, and the rest he hopes to find. He acknowledges that he has seen and taken part in much, and again calls himself lucky, but the old nickname no longer describes an uncomplicated confidence. Its movement from affectionate household joke to inward comparison gives it its force: the golden trousers belong to a remembered self, while the man who bears the name now has to discover what remains in his pockets.