My Struggle: Book 2: A Man in Love (48 page)

‘I’ve been to Norway only once, Karl Ove,’ he said. ‘To Narvik. I was in goal for some football club, and we went there to play a Norwegian team.’

‘Oh yes!’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said, nodding.

‘Karl Ove has also played football,’ Linda said.

‘Long time ago now,’ I said. ‘And at a very modest level.’

‘Were you in goal?’

‘No.’

‘Right.’

Pause.

He took another swig of coffee in the same, somehow scrupulously planned, way.

‘Well, this has been nice,’ he said when the cup was back on his coaster. ‘But now I’d better think about getting home.’

He stood up.

‘But you’ve only just come!’ Linda said.

‘It was perfect,’ he said. ‘I’d like to invite you to a meal. It’s my turn. Is Tuesday convenient?’

I met Linda’s eyes. It was her decision.

‘It is,’ she said.

‘Then that’s a deal,’ he said. ‘Five o’clock on Tuesday.’

On the way to the hall he peered through the open bedroom door and stopped.

‘Did you do the painting here as well?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘May I see?’

‘Of course,’ I said.

We followed him in. He stood in front of the wall and looked up behind the enormous wood burner.

‘It wasn’t easy to paint there, I can see,’ he said. ‘But it looks good!’

Vanja made a little noise. She was lying on my arm so I couldn’t see her face, and I laid her down on the bed. She smiled. Roland sat on the edge of the bed and put his hand around her foot.

‘Don’t you want to hold her?’ Linda asked. ‘You can if you want.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen her now.’

Then he got up, went into the hallway and put on his coat. As he was about to leave he hugged me. His stubble rubbed against my cheek.

‘Nice to meet you, Karl Ove,’ he said. He hugged Linda, grabbed Vanja’s foot again and set off down the stairs in his long coat.

Linda avoided my gaze as she passed Vanja to me and went into the living room to clear the table. I followed.

‘What do you think of him?’ she asked airily on her way.

‘He’s a nice man,’ I said. ‘But he has absolutely no filter against the world. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone who radiates such immense vulnerability.’

‘He’s like a child, isn’t he.’

‘Yes, he is. There’s no doubt about that.’

She walked past me with three coffee cups on top of each other in one hand, the cake basket in the other.

‘That’s quite some grandfather Vanja has got,’ I said.

‘Yes, what is it going to be like?’ she asked. There was no irony in her voice; the question came straight from the darkness of her heart.

‘It’ll be fine of course,’ I said.

‘But I don’t want him in our life,’ she said, putting the cups in the dishwasher.

‘If it’s like this I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘No harm in him dropping by for coffee once in a while. And then the odd meal at his place. He is her grandfather after all.’

Linda closed the dishwasher door, took a transparent plastic bag from the bottom drawer of a cabinet and put the three remaining cakes in it, tied a knot and went past me to put it in the hall freezer.

‘But he won’t be happy with that, I know. Now he’s made contact he’ll start ringing. And he only does that when he’s in a mess. There are no limits for him. You have to understand that.’

She went into the living room for the last plates.

‘We can try at any rate,’ I said following her. ‘And see what happens?’

‘OK,’ she said.

At that moment there was a ring at the door.

What could that be? The crazy neighbour again?

But it was Roland. His eyes were frantic.

‘I can’t get out,’ he said. ‘I can’t find the buzzer for the lock. I’ve searched and searched. But it isn’t there. Can you help me?’

‘Of course I can,’ I said. ‘I’ll just pass Vanja over to Linda.’

After doing that I put on my shoes and followed him down to the front hall, showed him where the buzzer was, on the wall to the right of the first door.

‘I’ll make a note of that,’ he said. ‘For next time. On the right of the first door.’

Three days later we had a meal in his flat. He showed us the wall he had painted, and glowed with satisfaction when I praised his handiwork. He hadn’t started cooking yet, and Vanja was asleep in the buggy in the hall, so Linda and I sat alone in the sitting room chatting while he was busy in the kitchen. On the wall were childhood pictures of Linda and her brother, and beside them newspaper articles and cuttings of interviews they had given when they made their debuts. Her brother had also had a book published, in 1996, but, like Linda, he hadn’t produced anything since.

He’s so proud of you,’ I said to Linda.

She looked down at the table.

‘Shall we go out onto the balcony?’ she suggested. ‘So that you can have a smoke?’

There wasn’t a balcony but a roof terrace, from which, between two other roofs, you could see over Östermalm. A roof terrace right by Stureplan; how many millions must the flat be worth? True, it was dark and smoke-infested, but that was easy enough to sort out.

‘Does your father own the flat?’ I asked, lighting a cigarette with my hand cupped over the lighter flame.

She nodded.

I had never lived in a place where the right address and elegant apartments meant as much as they did in Stockholm. Somehow it was a concentrate of everything. If you lived outside, well, you weren’t really included. The question of where you lived, which came up again and again, was therefore charged in Stockholm in a way that was quite different to Bergen, for example.

I walked to the edge to see below. There were still small piles of snow and patches of ice left on the pavement after the winter, almost completely eroded by the mild weather and grey from the sand and exhaust fumes. The sky above us was also grey, laden with cold rain that lashed the town at regular intervals. Grey but with a different light in it from the grey winter sky, for it was March, and March light was so clear and strong that it penetrated the cloud cover, even on a muggy day like this, and opened all the gates of darkness, as it were. There was a gleam in the walls in front of me and in the tarmac on the road beneath. The parked cars glinted, each in its own colour. Red, blue, dark green, white.

‘Hold me,’ she said.

I stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray on the table and put my arms around her.

When, a moment later, we went back in, the sitting room was still empty and we entered the kitchen. He was by the stove pouring the contents of a tin of mushrooms into the frying pan. The liquid hissed as it met the hot pan. Then he added a diced courgette. A pan of spaghetti was boiling next to it.

‘That looks good,’ I said.

‘Yes, it is good,’ he said.

On the worktop there was a tin of shrimps in brine and a tin of double cream.

‘I usually have dinner down at Vikingen. But on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays I eat here. Then I cook for Berit.’

Berit was his girlfriend.

‘Is there anything we can help with?’ Linda asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Have a seat and I’ll bring the food when it’s ready.’

The food tasted like something I could have made when I was a student and ate alone in my bedsit in Absalon Beyers gate during my first year at Bergen University. Linda’s father talked more about the time when he played in goal for the team in Norrland. Then he talked about what his job had been, planning and designing warehouses. Then he talked about the horse he had once owned, which had been injured just as it looked as if it was going to start winning. He recounted everything in very precise, elaborate terms as if every detail was of the uttermost significance. At one point in the conversation he went to fetch a pen and paper so that he could show us how he had come to the precise number of days he had left to live. I sought Linda’s eyes, but she would not meet mine. We had determined in advance that the visit should be brief, so when dessert, a two-litre carton of ice cream served up on the table, was over we got to our feet and said we were afraid we had to go, Vanja had to be taken home and fed and changed. This appeared to please him. The visit had already lasted an infinity. I went into the hall and put on my outdoor clothes while Linda and he exchanged a few words in private. He said something about her being his girl and that she had grown so much. Come here and sit on my lap for a bit. I tied the last shoelace, got up, went to the crack in the door and looked into the room. Linda was sitting on his lap, he had his arms around her waist while saying something I was unable to catch. There was something grotesque about the sight, she was thirty-two years old, the girlish pose she struck was much too young for her, which she knew of course, her lips were pursed in disapproval, her whole being screamed with ambivalence. She didn’t want to go along with this, but she didn’t want to reject him either. He would not have understood a rejection, it would have hurt him, so she had to sit through it while he patted her until it would no longer seem like a rejection to get up and she was standing in front of him again.

I stepped back so that I would not make the situation worse for her by being a witness to it. When she came into the hall I was studying the pictures hanging on the wall. She put on her things. Her father came out to say goodbye, he gave me a hug, as before, looked at Vanja sleeping in the buggy, embraced Linda, stood in the doorway and watched us as we went into the lift, raised his hand for a last time and went inside as the lift door closed and we sank down through the building.

I never uttered a word regarding the little scene I had witnessed between them. In the way she had subordinated herself to him she had been a ten-year-old girl, I saw that; in the way she had fought against it, an adult woman. But the very fact that she’d had to fight somehow disqualified the notion of adulthood. Surely no adult would end up in a situation like this? He had no such thoughts, he was of the boundless kind, for him she was a daughter, nothing else, a creature of all ages.

And, as she had predicted, after that he began to ring us. It could be at any time of the day and in any state of mind, so Linda struck a deal with him: he would ring at a particular hour on a particular day. He seemed to like that. But it was also a commitment: if we didn’t answer the phone he might be terribly offended and regard the contract as null and void, so he would be free to ring us whenever he wanted again, or never ring again. As for myself, I spoke to him only a handful of times. Once he asked me if he could sing me a song. He had written it himself, and it had been performed on stages in Stockholm and on the radio, he said. I didn’t know what to believe. But there was no reason why he shouldn’t be allowed to sing. He launched into song, his voice was powerful, his energy immense and even though he didn’t hit all the notes to perfection the performance was still impressive. The song had four verses and was about a migrant worker building a road in Norrland. When he had finished I didn’t know what else to say except that it was a wonderful song. Presumably he had expected more because he was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, ‘I know you write books, Karl Ove. I haven’t read them yet, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about them. And I want you to know that. I’m hugely proud of you, Karl Ove. Yes, I am . . .’

‘I’m happy to hear that,’ I said.

‘Are you and Linda OK?’

‘Yes, we are.’

‘Are you kind to her?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s good. You must never leave her. Never. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘You must take care of her. You must be kind to her, Karl Ove.’ Then he burst into tears.

‘We get on well,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’

‘I’m just an old man,’ he said. ‘But I’ve experienced a lot, you see. I’ve experienced more than most. My life isn’t anything to shout about now. But I’ve counted how many days I have left. Did you know?’

‘Yes, you showed us how you had worked it out when we were at your place.’

‘Ah, yes, yes. But you haven’t met Berit, have you.’

‘No.’

‘She’s so kind to me.’

‘So I gather,’ I said.

He was suddenly on his guard.

‘Eh? How?’

‘Well, Linda has told me a bit about her. And Ingrid. You know . . .’

‘I see. I won’t bother you any more, Karl Ove. I’m sure you have important things to do.’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘You’re not bothering me at all.’

‘Tell Linda I called. Take care.’

He rang off before I had a chance to wish him the same. On the display I saw that the whole conversation had not taken more than eight minutes. Linda snorted when I told her.

‘You don’t have to listen to that stuff,’ she said. ‘Don’t answer the phone next time he rings.’

‘It doesn’t bother me,’ I said.

‘But it does bother me,’ she said.

Linda’s documentary contained nothing of this. She had edited out everything except his voice. However, therein lay everything. He talked about his life, and his voice was filled with sorrow when he spoke of his mother’s death, happiness when he spoke of his first years of adulthood, resignation when he spoke about his move to Stockholm. He spoke about the problems he’d had with the telephone, what a curse the invention had been for him, how for long periods he had kept it in a cupboard. He spoke of his daily routines, but also about his dreams, of which the greatest was to run a stud farm. Here he came into his own, and there was something hypnotic about his account, you were sucked into his world from the very first sentence. But most of all of course it was about Linda. Hearing what she did or reading what she wrote, I came so close to the person she was. It was as though those special qualities that stirred within her only then became visible. In our daily lives they were lost in whatever we were doing, which was the same as everyone else did, I saw nothing of the person I had fallen in love with. If I hadn’t actually forgotten, I certainly didn’t give it a thought.

How was that possible?

I looked at her. She tried to hide the anticipation in her eyes. Dropped her gaze too easily to the DAT player on the table and the mass of wires beneath.