Encircling (28 page)
Authors: Carl Frode Tiller
“Now I see why you’re always so nice to him,” Egil says, “and why you’re always so keen to stand up for him,” he says, and I hear what he’s saying and yet again I’m struck by how true this seems, how all the pieces seem to fit and how much more real this is than what is actually real. “So that’s why we never get to meet his new lady friend,” Egil says. “It’s you he’s … All that about the waitress is just a pack of lies,” he says, and he looks me in the eye and he pauses. “How long has it been going on?” he asks. “Not very long, a few months.” It just slips out. “And how many people know about it?” he asks. “Not very many,” I say. “Not very many?” he says, raging now. “In other words, more than just the two of you,” he says, glaring at me, and I hold his gaze and a moment passes, then he lowers his eyes. “It’s so … it’s so humiliating,” he says, sounding distraught now. “Okay, so who else knows about it?” he asks. “Do any of my friends know about it?” he asks. “Don’t ask me that,
Egil,” I say, and I picture myself as I say it, picture how my face takes on a slightly agonized look and I can almost feel the pain which this agonized face reflects. “It doesn’t really matter,” I say. “It fucking well does matter,” Egil cries. “It matters to me because I’d like to know which of my friends I can trust,” he says. “None of your friends know about it,” I say. “Oh, don’t give me that, dammit,” he says. “If none of them knew anything about it you would have said so as soon as I asked,” he says, staring at me, and he waits and I look at him, saying nothing, then I look at the floor.
“They know, they all know,” he says softly, then he pauses. “I can tell by your face,” he says, raising his voice slightly, then he pauses again and I just stand there saying nothing, and the longer I stand like this, the more convinced he’ll become that he’s right, and I just stand there. “Fuck’s sake, Silje, I’m all alone now because of you, do you realize that?” he says and I look up at him and he looks at me and then he turns away and the moments pass and then all of a sudden he starts to laugh. “Oh, this is so funny,” he says and he laughs in a way I’ve never heard him laugh before. “This is so bloody funny,” he says. “So that’s why Trond has been drinking so much lately. God, I’ve been so blind,” he says, and I hear what he’s saying and yet again I’m struck by how well he gets the pieces to fit, how true it all seems, truer than the actual truth.
“And what do you intend to do now?” he says. He’s sitting with his elbows on his knees, looking at the floor, and he gives a faint shake of his head and a moment passes. “What do I intend to do?” I say. “Well, it was you who fucking started this,” he cries. “Well, I can’t be the only one to blame for our marriage going so badly wrong that it’s come to this, can I?” I say. “You’ve got some fucking nerve,” Egil
yells and I flinch when he yells and he straightens up and glares at me. “Not only do you cheat on me with my own brother,” he cries. “And not only am I just about the last one to know about it,” he says, “but now you’re blaming me for it.” “No, I’m not,” I cry. “I’m saying that it happened because of the way our marriage has turned out, and I think we’re both equally to blame for that,” I say, and I hear what I’m saying and I’m struck by how well I’m arguing my case. “Bullshit!” Egil snarls at me. “This is your fault and yours alone, this has all come about simply because I couldn’t live up to the ridiculous standards you set for how a man’s supposed to behave when it comes to love and romance,” he says. “You’re living in a bloody romcom and since I haven’t been able to comply with your demands you’ve gone and thrown yourself at that idiot brother of mine,” he says. “There,” he says, “in that hopeless dreamer you’ve found someone who can satisfy your ludicrous romantic yearnings,” he says, then he pauses, gives a bitter laugh. “But when it starts to become routine it’ll start all over again,” he says. “And you’ll go looking for somebody new,” he says, grinning fiercely at me. “Just you wait,” he says triumphantly, “just you wait, you’ll see I’m right,” he says.
“There you go again,” I cry, “putting yourself above reproach,” I cry. “Stop saying that, dammit,” he yells at me. “It makes me sick to hear you quoting that moron brother of mine.” “Well, you do it,” I yell back and the fury erupts inside me. “If I’m having an affair with another man it can’t possibly be because of what’s happened to us, can it?” I roar. “Oh no, it’s because I’m not living in the real world.” I pause and I glare at him and my eyes feel as though they’re growing too big for their sockets. “How far are you actually prepared to go to maintain the illusion
that you’re perfect?” I roar. “The real world is too dull for me, so I have to take a lover who can bolster my faith in a romantic fantasy world.” I hear what I’m saying and I hear how true it is, what I’m saying, how right I am. “What a load of bloody rubbish!” I roar. “You’re the one who’s living in a fantasy world, Egil. You! You’re living in a fantasy world in which you’re perfect – and anyway, it’s not true!”
There is total silence. “What’s not true?” Egil asks, and he looks straight at me. “I’m not having an affair with Trond or anyone else,” I say and I hear what I’m saying and I realize how surprised I am by what I’m saying, by the fact that I’m giving the show away just like that. “And I never have, either,” I say. “It’s not true,” I say, and I look at him and I try to smile an airy indifferent smile. “Huh?” Egil says, and he stands there with his mouth half open, staring at me, his eyes round and intent. “It’s not true,” I say. “I lied,” I say, then I let out a high, rippling laugh and the moments pass and Egil just stands there gazing at me in astonishment. “Oh, come on,” he says. “Do you think you can get out of it that easily?” he says, but I can tell by his face that he doesn’t quite know what to make of me. “It’s true,” I say. “I lied,” I say and I smile that airy, indifferent smile.
“But,” he says, then he pauses. Then: “Why did you lie to me?” he asks. “I don’t know,” I say and I give a little shrug and I give that high laugh again, but my laughter is too bright, my laughter is too shrill and something suddenly breaks loose inside me, something large and heavy breaks loose and I can’t stop it, and Egil is eyeing me gravely and I look a little to one side of Egil and try to keep smiling that airy, indifferent smile.
“Silje, what is it? What’s the matter?” Egil asks, and I hear the creak as he gets up from the wicker chair. “You’ve got
me really worried now,” he says, and I hear him walking towards me and I look to the side and try to keep smiling that airy, indifferent smile, but I can’t, this big, heavy thing breaks loose inside me and it falls through me, it falls and falls and I feel my head start to spin. “Is it true; were you lying?” he asks. “Yes,” I say briskly, trying to sound bright and cheerful, but it’s no use, it comes out as nothing but a forlorn little gasp, and now Egil walks up to me and now I feel his hand on my shoulder and I can tell that he means to draw me to him and comfort me, and a moment passes, then I brush his hand off my shoulder.
“Silje,” he says gravely. “I really hate ending up like this,” I say, and everything slides and falls inside me and my head is spinning faster and faster and my eyes flick back and forth. “I really hate it,” I say. “Ending up like what?” he says. “All overemotional and unhinged,” I say. “A hysterical female, or the standard image of a hysterical female,” I say, and a moment passes. “But I’m not,” I scream. “I’m not a hysterical female,” I scream. “And yet I always end up seeming like one,” I say, and a moment passes, and now I feel the tears welling up. “And now I’m going to start crying, too,” I say and the sobs roll through me and this great heavy weight falls through me. “Oh, shit!” I gasp and then there’s silence and I feel Egil’s hand on my shoulder again.
“Silje,” he says. “No,” I scream at him, and he jumps when I scream, and I brush his hand off my shoulder again. “Don’t touch me!” I scream. “Silje,” he says. “Just don’t touch me,” I say. “I don’t understand … I feel so confused,” he says. “You make me feel so confused, Silje. I want to help you, because I know you’re having a hard time of it,” he says, and he looks at me, his eyes wide and intent. “But
I don’t want your help,” I cry. “I don’t want to be this hysterical female who goes to pieces and has to be helped and comforted by you,” I say. “I hate that, I hate you and I hate myself and I …” I say, and then I collapse in floods of tears, I double up, put my hands on my knees and gaze at the floor, I shake my head and the tears roll down my cheeks. “I don’t know what to do,” I sob. “I’m so tired, I hardly sleep at all at night now, I just wander around in a permanent daze,” I say.
“Come here,” Egil says, and he takes a step towards me, puts his arms round me. “No,” I scream, and I raise my fists and pound his chest, and I see the look of bewilderment on his face as he staggers back a pace or two. “Would you just listen to me for once?” I scream. “Back off!” I scream, but he doesn’t back off, he comes up to me again and he raises his arms and he puts his arms round me again and I try to push them away and I try to shove him back, but it’s no use, he’s too strong and he holds me tight. “Let me go!” I scream, and I wriggle and squirm. “Let me go!” I scream again, but he won’t let me go. “Silje,” he says. “Calm down! Silje!” he says and he holds me tighter still and I feel his warm breath on my neck and I feel his fingertips digging into my back. “There, there,” he says, and there’s a moment’s silence and then I feel the strength start to drain out of me, this strength I’ve been filled with, this life I’ve been filled with, it seems to seep out of me and I feel myself snuffing out, feel myself withering and dying and I don’t have the strength to keep going and I bury my face in the hollow of Egil’s shoulder and I cry and he strokes my back and I cry and cry and he rocks me gently from side to side.
“I’m sorry, Egil,” I say, and I hear what I’m saying, whatever was talking through me is gone and I can hear
myself giving in. “I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s okay, Silje,” he says softly. “I don’t mean to be like this,” I say. “I don’t know why I’m like this,” I say. “Why I say things like that to you when they’re not true,” I say. “It’s okay, Silje,” he says, and then there’s silence and I straighten up and I look to the side, I can’t look at Egil right now, so I stare at the cooker. “But I’m hardly ever happy any more,” I say. “And it hurts so much,” I say. “I have everything I could possibly want, but I’m never happy, and I don’t know why,” I say. “Sometimes I think I’ve figured it out,” I say, “suddenly I feel I understand, and then … the next minute it’s gone and I’m still none the wiser,” I say and there’s silence again and then all of a sudden I start to cry again, all the fury and strength is gone and I feel that heaviness inside me again. “I’m hardly ever happy any more, Egil,” I sob. “And that’s hard on you and the kids,” I say. “They’re suffering because of me,” I say. “I can tell … and that makes it even harder,” I say, and I cry and cry, and Egil’s hand strokes and strokes my back. “Oh, Silje,” Egil says, and he hugs me tight. “You mean the world to me and the girls,” he says. “Oh,” I say, wiping the tears from my cheeks, “don’t say things like that, Egil,” I say. “It took me just days to get over Mum’s death, and I don’t think my kids would need much more than that to get over me,” I say and I hear what I’m saying and I realize how much it hurts to hear what I’m saying, and I realize how empty and heavy and tired I am. “Nor would you, come to that,” I say, it just slips out. “What are you saying?” he asks, and a moment passes, and I give a big sigh and wipe away the tears. “I don’t know,” I say. “I just don’t know any more,” I say, and the moments pass and there is total silence. “I love you,” Egil says, and the moments pass and I sigh. “I love you, too,” I say.
The time when Jon silenced the birds:
It was early in the morning and the birds were chirping and twittering in the hedge, but you and I and Jon were still sitting drinking at the kitchen table with our host – a guy from Molde who had just moved in (he had a pigeon chest and upper arms too skinny to accommodate normal-sized tattoos – “Is that a baby eagle on your bicep?” I asked, and of course he was offended). We were reluctant to call it a day, but all the bottles were empty and none of us was willing or able to cycle over to our place to fetch more booze so we just sat there on our kitchen chairs, trying to prolong the party by eking out the last drops in our glasses. Our host told us that he actually had a jerrycan of illicit liquor in the basement, but because one of his suppliers had just been charged with selling methanol he wasn’t a hundred per cent certain it was safe to drink (only ninety-six per cent certain as he said in an attempt at humour), so it was probably best not to touch it until he’d had it checked out, but you weren’t having any of that, of course, because you had suddenly spied a chance to do a Christopher Walken and play Russian roulette again. So, on the pretext of
going to the loo, you snuck down to the basement, filled a half-empty cola bottle with what was either ethanol or methanol, and then there you were, back in the kitchen, all set to risk your life. “I’ll test your hooch for you,” you announced to our host with a grin and, thinking that you had mixed the cola with water and that this was all a big joke, he laughed when you put the bottle to your lips and started to knock back the pale-brown liquid. But when he saw the looks on Jon’s face and mine he realized that this was no joke. The smile on his face froze and after opening and closing his mouth a few times he got halfway to his feet and shouted out a stammered “It’s true, it’s true, it could be methanol, really,” but that didn’t stop you. of course. You went on drinking until the bottle was half-empty, then you lowered it and held it out in front of you. You burped, wiped your glistening lips with the back of your hand and then you grinned and asked if anybody else wanted to try it. You ran your bleary vodka-soaked eyes round the room and, knowing full well that Jon was as shocked now as he had been when you picked and ate an unidentified mushroom, you stopped at him. Then, in a gratingly jaunty voice, with all of his pathetic suicide attempts in mind, you said: “Hey, Jon, you wouldn’t mind tasting it, I’m sure, seeing as you’re planning to hang yourself anyway.” At these words Jon exploded. With a rage I would never have thought possible of such a weak and pathetic character he leaped out of his chair and knocked the bottle out of your hand, sending it spinning across the kitchen, out of the open window and into the hedge, abruptly silencing the twittering birds, then he brought his face right up to yours and yelled that you were the biggest coward he’d ever met. You tried to convince yourself and everybody else that you were brave,
that this was a way of living more intensely, when in actual fact it was a way of running away, he roared, and after a long, furious tirade about how selfish and self-centred you were, he asked if you really thought he was so stupid that he didn’t know why you behaved the way you did. “You don’t dare say straight out that you don’t want anything to do with me any more, so you try to push me away by acting like an arsehole, don’t you think I know that?” he screamed, and I clearly remember the other people from the party, a bunch from Molde who had helped our host move in and were now crashed out, fast asleep on the living room floor, being woken by his screaming. Some of them lay where they were, only shifting a little like logs rolling in the surf, but a few sat up and stared at the two of you in alarm. You were still grinning and trying to look as if you weren’t in the least bit bothered by any of this, but when Jon, quite beside himself with rage and despair, turned to the guys from Molde and yelled, “We’re gay, you know; him there, he doesn’t dare admit it to himself or anybody else, but we’re gay and we’ve been lovers for almost two years,” the grin faded and I’m not sure whether the look on your face was one of hurt or sadness as you shook your head and told Jon that you were afraid there must be some misunderstanding. You weren’t gay, you mumbled and you had tried to tell him this many a time. Unlike him you tried to take the things you believed in and talked about seriously, you said. For you, it wasn’t just empty talk when you referred to Schopenhauer’s grand theory on mankind’s collective suicide or when you quoted Zapffe, saying, “be infertile, and let the earth be silent after ye”. You actually meant what you said, and since no child would ever result from two men having sex, gay sex was not only acceptable,
it was the safest and best way for two people to have sex. “It’s just a pity that it doesn’t come as naturally to all of us,” you added.
Only later did I realize that you had actually been telling the truth. At the time I thought, as did the others I assume, that this was all nothing but a ridiculous excuse. Since we were sleeping together and I knew what you liked and didn’t like to do in bed, and since I knew how willing you were to experiment and try new things, sexually as well as in other ways, naturally the thought that you might be a closet gay never occurred to me, as it probably had to the other people present. I simply assumed that you were embarrassed by the fact that everybody now knew you had had sex with another man and had therefore seized on the first excuse you could think of. But the more I thought about it and the more I saw how unbelievably uncompromising you could actually be and how willing you were to stand up for what you truly believed in, the more certain I became that you really had “made a serious attempt to live as a homosexual”, as you later put it. Whether this fanaticism and refusal to compromise came to be seen as an aspect of the mental illness you were eventually diagnosed as suffering from, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t rule out that possibility.
That Jon, the only one who knew you as well as I did, doggedly maintained that you were homosexual was naturally just wishful thinking on his part. Although I was surprised when he confessed to being gay, once he had said it it seemed so obvious and apparent, not only because of his slight, girlish figure and rather effeminate manner, but also because certain things he had said or done that had puzzled me suddenly made sense. Suddenly I understood that it was the muscular half-naked guys that had been the real
attraction when he insisted on watching even the crappiest music videos on MTV (although he had always laughed, of course, and said it was the fact that they were so crappy that made them funny) and suddenly I understood why he (and you) had been so shocked when his dad beat up that young guy outside the Quayside: not, first and foremost, because his dad would end up back inside, but because his dad clearly believed there was nothing in the world worse than being gay and because, as Jon (drama queen that he was) remarked to you later, “every time he hit that guy it was like he was hitting me”. Looking back on it, it was also clear to me that Jon, typically, had played on the role of fragile victim that being gay in a small town had accorded him, as you could confirm. You were the only person who had known that he was gay and you told me how sick and tired you had been of having to listen to his constant moaning, of always having to be sympathetic, having to console him and cheer him up, and of having to rush to his side at all hours of the day or night because he was threatening, yet again, to kill himself. He tried to convince himself and you that being gay in a small town was a nightmare, but in fact he loved it, you said, and what I had construed as sentimentality, self-pity and melodramatics on Jon’s part was nothing compared to what you had had to put up with.
When I think of all the stories you told me about this, about the extremes he would go to, and when I think of how Jon has not only never come out of the closet – even though that should be no big deal in 2006 – but has also had a long-term girlfriend, I’m almost inclined to believe that he isn’t gay at all, but was simply playing the part of the poor, oppressed homosexual to gain sympathy and closeness and to make himself seem interesting.
And naturally it was this side of him that eventually became too much for you. Instead of trying to alienate him by acting like real arseholes, as we had in fact been doing all that summer and autumn, we should of course have told him how fed up we were of constantly being dragged down into his black hole, how sick and tired we were of him killing all our enthusiasm and creativity by indirectly forcing us to feel sorry for him or to take a bleak view of things. But such things are easier said than done. We had kind of grown together, like an old married couple (if you can say that of three people), and right up until that morning after – the last time I would see Jon for many, many years (he did call a few days later, it’s true, but when, as usual, he said that he couldn’t remember a thing about the party, we let him know that enough was enough and that he needn’t bother calling again) – we had chosen to nag and snipe at each other rather than simply go our separate ways.
During the weeks that followed we flourished, you and I, both creatively and as a couple. Had it not been for the fact that we moved to different cities to study and hence, despite a few valiant attempts to maintain our relationship, gradually drifted further and further apart and eventually lost touch completely, I can’t help thinking that the whole of my adult life could have been very, very different.
The time when we shut ourselves away in a cottage in the mountains:
A stoat had got stuck in the chimney at the cottage and there it had stayed, rather like a tumour in a throat, until it froze or starved to death. After shovelling away some of the old, coarse snow, you climbed up onto the roof, and while I
alternated between being inside, hunched down with my head half inside the chimney and my face upturned, and outside, peering up at you and shading my eyes with my hand so I could see you properly, you tried to shove the stoat down the chimney with the aid of a long fishing rod we had found in the cottage. And eventually you managed it. The emaciated, frosted body was stiff and rock-hard, I remember, and it hit the soot-blackened, though originally red, bricks below with a little clunk.
Afterwards I picked the animal up with both hands and carried it across the creaky cottage floor and out onto the front step. I was about to toss it into the dense thicket of gnarled dwarf birch, but you asked me not to and minutes later I was sitting on the step, nodding and applauding with wry formality while you presented what you called the first artwork of our stay. (Inspired by The Band, who shut themselves away in a cottage in the mountains to write what was to become
Music from Big Pink
we had decided to spend a week at the cottage up in the mountains at Dovre, being creative in all sorts of ways.) You nailed the stoat’s little back paws to the tree stump just outside the cottage door so it stood on its hindlegs like a tiny stuffed polar bear. That done, you took a step back in order to admire your handiwork along with me and talked about how great it would look when the sun came up and its warmth caused the creature to slowly cave in on itself like a whey-faced old man collapsing and expiring.
Later, once we’d lit a fire, eaten our cheese sandwiches and opened the first bottle of red wine, I presented what we recorded as the second artwork of our stay. While we were eating we had discussed how long we might be able to survive in this place without any outside help, and inspired by this conversation I wrote a story which – although, like the earlier
piece I mentioned, I don’t remember it word for word – told how, hundreds of years after a nuclear disaster brought about by our own generation, our descendants crawled up out of the dark subterranean caverns in which they had been hiding and how, when their children – who had never seen the starry night sky before – asked what they were, those yellow things twinkling way up there, they were told that they were droplets of pee from a god who was shaking his cock.
Only now do I see that this piece was probably inspired as much by you and what you were going through at that time as by our entertaining discussion of how long we would survive in the wild on our own. Because, just as those descendants of ours in my story were in the process of inventing a mystical universe in which to believe and to steer by, so you were in the process of inventing a past in which to believe and to steer by. We had always made a big joke of it when you presented your countless theories as to who your real father might be, but even though I knew you didn’t say what you said just for fun, I didn’t realize how seriously you actually took it. You were already well on the way to developing the mental problems that would later lead to you being hospitalized and undergoing therapy, but I didn’t see that. Not even when the aforementioned fear that your father might have suffered from a serious hereditary disease turned into hypochondria did I realize that there was a problem. I shook my head despairingly when you began to read up on all sorts of different diseases and it disturbed and exasperated me the way you would detect symptoms of MS one day and some obscure syndrome the next, but it never occurred to me that this was one of several signs that you were gradually being swallowed up by your own imaginings and speculations. Looking back on it, it’s easy to say that I ought to have seen
what was happening, but a lot of things that I would construe as symptoms today, now that I know you were actually ill, I merely interpreted then as interesting and intriguing aspects of your personality, and since we didn’t only endeavour to be open-minded and tolerant, but tended almost to cultivate the weird and the unusual, I couldn’t see that something was wrong. You were just different and the way we saw it, true children of individualism that we were, being different was almost always a good thing.
The time when we took a picture of the light with a capital L:
The sun was out, but it had just been raining and with every little puff of wind the leaf-heavy birch branches lifted slightly and sent a beautiful, shimmering shower of raindrops falling onto our driveway. I wanted to take a picture of it, but you felt it was way too kitschy. To some extent I agreed with you, but the trees looked so droopy and dejected, like a crowd of people mourning and weeping for someone they had lost, and I thought that if we could just capture that it could still make a good picture. So we stepped over the huge, shining puddle in the middle of the gravel path and made our way over to the postbox on its stand. We positioned ourselves with the sun behind us and you raised your new Nikon SLR only to promptly lower it again because, hanging from the beam in our empty garage, just a few yards away, was a narrow black cable with a solitary light bulb suspended from it. I totally agreed with you when you said that that light bulb made one think of a gallows, and that the image of a gallows would go well with the drooping, weeping trees in the foreground.