My Struggle: Book 2: A Man in Love (38 page)

One morning, going down the stairs to the Metro platform under Sveavägen, I found my eyes drawn towards two men brawling. Their aggression alongside all the weary passengers was dreadful, they shouted, no, screeched at each other, my heart beat faster and then they pounced on each other with such ferocity as a train drew in to the platform. One of them wrestled himself free to get space to kick the other. I went closer. They were locked in combat again. I thought, I will have to intervene. The boxer incident, when I hadn’t dared to kick in the door, and the boat incident, when I hadn’t dared to ask Arvid to slow down, as well as Linda’s concern about my failure to act, had played on my mind so much that now there was no doubt in my mind. I could not stand by and watch. I had to intervene. The very thought made my knees go weak and my arms tremble. Nonetheless, I put down my bag, this was a test, I thought, shit, now I would have to give a shit, and went straight over to the two brawlers and wrapped my arms around the closest one. I squeezed as hard as I could. As I did, another man stepped forward between them, and a third, and the fight was over. I picked up my bag, got into the train on the other side and sat there until we got to Åskehov, drained, with my heart pounding in my chest. No one could claim I had been slow to act, nor that I had been very smart, they could have had knives, anything, and the fight had absolutely nothing to do with me.

What was odd about these months was the way in which we came closer to each other and grew apart. Linda did not bear grudges, and after something had happened, it had happened, it was over. For me it was different. I held grudges, and every single one of these incidents over the last year lay somehow stored inside me. At the same time I understood what had happened, the sparks of anger that had begun to fly in our lives that first autumn, they were linked with what had been lost in our relationship, Linda was afraid of losing the rest, she was trying to bind me and my shying away from these bonds increased the distance, and that was precisely what she feared. When she became pregnant everything changed, now there was a horizon beyond the one the two of us formed, something greater than us, and it was there the whole time, in my thoughts and hers. Her unease may have been great, but even in its midst there was always a wholeness and security in her. Everything would fall into place, it would be fine, I knew it would.

In mid-December Yngve and the children came to visit. With them they brought the long-awaited buggy. They stayed for a few days. Linda was friendly on the first day and a few hours into the second, but then she turned her back, assumed the hostile air that could drive me insane. Not when it was only me subjected to it because I was used to this and knew how to counter it, but when others were. Then I had to step in, try to mollify Linda, try to mollify Yngve and keep channels open. Six weeks left to the big day, she wanted peace and quiet and considered she was entitled to that, and perhaps she was, what did I know, but surely it didn’t mean you no longer needed to be amiable with your guests? Being hospitable, having people over to stay for as long as they liked, was important to me, and I didn’t understand how it was possible for Linda to behave as she was doing. Or, yes, I did: she would soon be giving birth and she didn’t want crowds of people in the house, also, she and Yngve were light years apart. Yngve had had a good close relationship with Tonje, he didn’t have the same with Linda, she noticed that of course, but why the hell did she have to act on it? Why couldn’t she hide all her emotions and play the game? Be friendly to my family? Wasn’t I friendly to hers? Had I ever said they came round too much and endlessly stuck their noses into matters that did not concern them? Linda’s family and friends were with us a thousand times more than mine, the ratio was a thousand to one, and yet, even though the disparity was immense, she could not and would not adapt, she turned her back. Why? Because she was acting on emotions. But emotions are there to be repressed.

I said nothing, held all my reproaches and my anger in check, and when Yngve and the children had left and Linda was happy, light-hearted and excited again, I didn’t punish her by keeping my distance and being sullen, which would have been my natural response, no, on the contrary, I dropped the matter, let unreasonable bygones be unreasonable bygones, and the run-up to Christmas and the days afterwards were wonderful.

On the last evening of 2003, with me running to and fro in the kitchen and sorting out the food while Geir sat in a chair chatting away and watching, there was no longer a trace of the life I had left in Bergen. Everything I had around me now was somehow connected with two people I hadn’t actually known at all then. Mostly Linda, of course, with whom I now shared all of my life, but also Geir. I had been influenced by him, and not in a small way either, and that could be an unpleasant thought, that I was so easy to influence, that my views could so easily be affected by others. Occasionally I mused that he was like one of those childhood friends you weren’t allowed to play with. Keep your distance from him, Karl Ove, he’s a bad influence.

I placed the last half-lobster on the dish, put down the knife and wiped the sweat from my forehead.

‘There we are,’ I said. ‘Just the garnish left.’

‘If only people knew what you do,’ Geir said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The general perception of writers’ lives is that they are exciting and desirable. But you generally spend most of your time cooking and cleaning.’

‘True enough,’ I said. ‘But now look how well it’s turned out!’

I cut the lemons into four and placed them between the lobsters, tore off some sprigs of parsley and laid them alongside.

‘People like scandalous writers, you see. You should go to the Theatercafé with a harem of young women running round you. That’s what’s expected. Not standing here and languishing over your bloody buckets of water . . . The biggest disappointment in Norwegian literature must be Tor Ulven, by the way. He didn’t even go out! Ha ha ha!’

His laughter was infectious. I laughed as well.

‘And on top of all that he committed suicide!’ he added. ‘Ha ha ha!’

‘Ha ha ha!’

‘Ha ha ha! But you have to say Ibsen was also a disappointment. Though not the top hat with the mirror, by the way. That deserves respect. And the live scorpion he kept on his desk. Bjørnson wasn’t a disappointment. And definitely not Hamsun. In fact, you can divide up Norwegian literature like this. And I’m afraid you don’t come out very well.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘But at least it’s clean here. There we are. Now there’s just the bread left.’

‘Incidentally, you should write that essay on Olav H. Hauge you’ve been talking about. Soon.’

‘The bad man of Hardanger?’ I said, taking a loaf of bread out of its brown paper bag.

‘Yes, that one.’

‘I’ll do it one day,’ I said, rinsing the knife under a jet of hot water and drying it on the kitchen cloth before cutting. ‘In fact, I do think about it now and then. Him lying naked in the coal cellar after smashing all the furniture in the living room. Or the village boys throwing stones at him. Hell, there were some years when he must have been completely off his trolley.’

‘Not least the little matter of him writing that Hitler was a great man, and then removing what he had written during the war from his diary,’ Geir said.

‘Yes, not least,’ I said. ‘But the most significant part of the whole diary is what he writes when his periods of illness begin. You can read how everything starts going faster and faster as his inhibitions disappear. Suddenly there he is, writing what he
really
thinks about writers and their books. Normally he’s
so
punctilious about saying something nice about everyone. Polite and considerate and friendly and nice. And then there’s the breakdown. It’s strange that no one has written about it, isn’t it. I mean the way his judgements of Jan Erik Vold changed so radically.’

‘No one dares write about it of course,’ Geir said. ‘It’s crazy. They hardly dare poke a finger in the periods when he lost it.’

‘There is a reason for it,’ I said, putting the slices of bread in the basket and starting on the next loaf.

‘And that would be?’

‘Decency. Manners. Consideration.’

‘Ah, think I can feel a sleep coming on. It just got so boring in here.’

‘I’m serious. I mean it.’

‘Of course you do. Listen to me. It
is
in the diary, is it?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘And you can’t understand Hauge without it?’

‘No.’

‘And you consider Hauge a great poet?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what conclusion do you draw from that? That we should ignore an important part of a great poet and diarist’s life for the sake of decency? Forget the unpleasantness?’

‘What does it matter whether Hauge believed powers from outer space shone lights on him or not? I mean, as far as the poems themselves are concerned. Besides, who knows where his brutish directness stopped and his sensitive politeness started? I mean, where do you
really
draw the line?’

‘What? Which bat has taken up residency in your belfry now? You’re the one who told me about Hauge’s more eccentric side, and in fact you were obsessed by it! You said the image of the wise man of Hardanger cannot go uncontested when you know that he was mad and anything but wise for protracted periods. Or, to be more precise, that the wisdom, whatever
that
might be, cannot be understood without the misery in his life.’

‘No bats without fire, as the Chinese say,’ I responded. ‘Perhaps our laughing at Tor Ulven has had some influence here. My conscience was pricking me.’

‘Ha ha ha! Is that so? You can’t be that sensitive and cautious. He is dead after all. And I don’t think he was much of a party animal, was he? He drove cranes, didn’t he? Ha ha ha!’

I cut the last slices and laughed, though not without a tinge of unease.

‘Well, that’s enough now,’ I said, as I put them in the basket. ‘If you take the basket of bread, the butter and the mayonnaise we can join the others.’

‘Oh, how wonderful!’ Helena said as I put the dish on the table.

‘You’ve done us proud, Karl Ove,’ Linda said.

‘Help yourselves,’ I said. Poured what was left of the champagne and opened a bottle of white wine, then sat down and put one of the lobster halves on my plate. Cracked the large claw with the pliers from the seafood set I had been given as a present by Gunnar and Tove some time ago. The meat that grew in such tasty profusion around the tiny flat white cartilage, or whatever it was. The space between the flesh and the outer shell where there was often water: What kind of feeling would
that
have been when the lobster was walking around on the seabed?

‘Now we’re having a grand time!’ I said in Norwegian dialect, and raised my glass. ‘
Skål!
’

Geir smiled. The others ignored what they didn’t understand and raised their glasses.

‘
Skål!
And thank you for inviting us!’ Anders said.

More often than not it was me who cooked when we had guests. Not so much because I liked doing it but because it gave me something to hide behind. I could stay in the kitchen when they arrived, poke my head in and say hello, carry on cooking in the kitchen, hidden, until the food was ready to serve and I had to appear. But even then I could hide behind something: a glass had to be filled with wine, another with water, I could take care of that and the instant the first course was finished I could clear the table and set it for the next.

That is what I did on this evening as well. As fascinated as I was by Anders, I was unable to talk to him. I liked Helena, but I couldn’t talk to her. I could talk to Linda, but now we were responsible for making sure the others were having a good time and therefore we couldn’t have a conversation. I could also talk to Geir, but when he was with others another side of his personality took over; he was talking to Anders about criminal acquaintances, they laughed and carried on, he entertained Helena with his shocking honesty, she reacted with a mixture of gasps and laughter. Beneath this there were also other tensions. Linda and Geir were like two magnets, they repelled each other. Helena was never quite happy with Anders when they were out, it was not uncommon for him to make comments with which she disagreed or which she considered foolish; this tension affected me. Christina could go for long periods without speaking, this too affected me, why was it, wasn’t she having a good time, was it us, Geir or herself?

There were almost no similarities between us, there were constant undercurrents of sympathies and antipathies beneath the surface, that is beneath what was said and done, but despite that, or perhaps because of it, it was a memorable evening, most of all because we suddenly reached a point where it felt as if no one had anything to lose and we could tell any story from our lives, even one we usually kept to ourselves.

The conversation stuttered into life, as most do between people who don’t know each other but about each other.

I raised the thick smooth flesh from the shell, divided it, forked a mouthful, ran it through the mayonnaise and lifted it to my lips.

Outside there was an enormous bang, like an exploding bomb. The windowpanes rattled.

‘That one wasn’t legal,’ Anders said.

‘Ah yes, you’re an expert on that, I gather,’ Geir said.

‘We’ve brought a sky lantern with us,’ Helena said. ‘You light it and then the lantern fills with hot air and just climbs into the sky. Higher and higher. And there’s no bang. It rises without a sound. It’s fantastic.’

‘Is it safe to let it off in a town?’ Linda asked. ‘I mean, what if it lands on a roof and it’s alight?’

‘Anything goes on New Year’s Eve,’ Anders said.

There was a silence. I wondered if I should tell them about the time a friend and I collected all the burned-out rockets on the first of January, removed all the powder, tamped it into a cartridge case and lit it. The image was still vivid in my brain: Geir Håkon turning towards me, his face black with soot. The horror that struck me when I realised that dad could have heard the bang and that the soot might not come off completely and that dad would be able to see. But the story didn’t have a point, I thought, so I got up and poured more wine, met Helena’s smiling gaze, sat down, glanced over at Geir, who had launched into the differences between Sweden and Norway, a theme he resorted to when conversation round the table was flagging. It was one on which everyone had something to say.