Shyness And Dignity (14 page)

his
thoughts, to have Thomas Mann express an opinion about his possibilities as a character in one of Thomas Mann’s own novels. We were now far into the 1990s and, dazzled by modernity, Norwegians had already begun to look forward with eagerness to the millennium and the presumed spectacular fireworks that would mark the occasion, Elias Rukla thought with a barely audible sigh.

After Eva Linde’s daughter, Camilla Corneliussen, had moved out of the apartment in Jacob Aalls gate, only the two of them were left there. A rather sottish senior master and his wife, a former beauty. Could it be said that Eva Linde’s indescribable beauty had disintegrated? To Elias Rukla this was not the correct way of expressing it. He could say, perhaps, that her beauty was gone, or that she had lost her beauty, but in that case he had to leave out the notion of ‘indescribable’ from her former beauty, because he would have perceived it as quite inadequate, even misleading, to say that Eva Linde’s indescribable beauty was gone, or that she had lost her indescribable beauty. Eva Linde could not lose her indescribable beauty. The biologically conditioned change that had taken place with her had to be described otherwise than with reference to what had been the very sign of the beauty she had once possessed. What he could have said, and he did say to himself, in his heart, was that he had difficulty retrieving Eva Linde’s charm in the figure and behaviour she now appeared to him in and with. She had become quite filled out and, in consequence, she could appear rather heavy. That is, she moved in a different way through the room now than at the time he had got to
know
her, and when he heard her footsteps he often came to think of that. Her face had also lost that softness which had undeniably distinguished it earlier on and helped make her person so attractive to men. But when Elias Rukla saw young women, he thought their faces had a smoothness about them rather than the softness he associated with Eva Linde at the same age, which he had to confess he missed. But he missed this softness only by looking at Eva, not at young women. Eva would sit before the mirror applying her make-up as before. Elias Rukla noticed that she could see her own drawn face, where the refined features had disappeared and, along with them, the line of her throat as she bent over, her hair falling slightly forward, causing her to brush it away as before. As he stood behind her in the doorway to the bedroom, looking at his wife before the mirror of her make-up table, Elias Rukla came out with encouraging comments about woman’s everlasting vanity, such as men with exceptionally beautiful wives can often permit themselves by way of a joke, as though nothing had befallen her. He felt obliged to come out with such comments, though as a matter of fact it had not been necessary. True, Eva Linde tried as best she could to repair her faded appearance, but she did not seem to mind very much that things had gone the way they had. What had happened had happened. On the whole, she appeared relieved, if anything, that her beauty was gone. She let the wrinkles and the creases emerge without the least sign of hysteria at having lost the lightness and the indefinable charm that had previously been inextricably
associated
with her person. For that matter, she had never understood her own beauty, viewing it as a fortuitous attribute of herself, and had felt bothered rather than flattered by men’s glances on account of this fortuitousness. Now she was liberated from it, and it seemed to agree with her. When Elias Rukla now stood behind her on the threshold to the bedroom and remarked upon her ‘vanity’ as she was making her toilet as usual, she had to smile; she liked the fact that he was doing it, but it had not been necessary, he did not keep up her spirits by doing so.

Already, before Camilla moved out, Eva Linde had decided on a new future. She left her job as a secretary at the Oslo Cinemas because she wanted to study to become a social worker. Elias had supported her in this, for she had a strong desire for more meaningful work than she felt she was doing at the Oslo Cinemas, or as a secretary in general. So she began to take a number of watches at various institutions, especially such as had to do with drug addicts. All this to collect points in order to be admitted to Norway’s College of Municipal and Social Affairs. Elias Rukla found it a bit difficult to understand her sudden interest in drug addicts, she had never expressed it before, but it may have been related to Camilla’s youth and her fear, as a mother, that her daughter might, through bad luck or a quest for excitement, end up in milieus that turned young people into drug addicts almost before they knew it themselves. But she had not expressed a specific fear of that kind, nor, as far as they knew, had Camilla given her any grounds for
it
. Elias himself was of the opinion that, mainly, she was no longer satisfied with her work as a secretary and did not want to continue with it, especially when envisaged as something she was to do for decades ahead, and that she was therefore more or less looking for something new and then, more or less by chance, hit on the idea of becoming a social worker, because the work with drug addicts looked exciting to her, an impression which must have been confirmed by her daily association with them for two or three years as a substitute, since she had not given it up and started something else, or for that matter anything at all, which she had also had the possibility to do, as Elias Rukla’s homebound wife, in any case theoretically. Why working with drug addicts could appear exciting and challenging to her, Elias Rukla was at a loss to understand; to him it looked like a heavy grind, with few bright spots, in a milieu that could scarcely make anyone feel jolly, as Elias had gathered when Eva came home from her watches – from night-watches early in the morning, for example. But the fact was that she preferred it to being a secretary, and without hesitation, even when she came home physically worn out and psychologically exhausted after a night-watch. Elias Rukla suspected there was a connection between Eva’s loss of interest in working as a secretary and the fading of her beauty. This was not exactly the sort of theory that he would air to others, least of all Eva herself. But at the time when she was indescribably beautiful, she had been happy as a secretary, and that was, Elias Rukla suspected, because her beauty gave her
a
kind of protection. Against men’s glances, however paradoxical that might sound. Her beauty had an educational effect on men who entered the office, where she sat behind the counter. On most, in any case. They became friendly and polite in their whole manner when they saw her, pulling themselves together somehow and making the utmost effort to be courteous, matter-of-fact and informative as far as their business was concerned. She had liked that. And those who did not, those who tried to get fresh with her, puffing themselves up and ruffling their feathers, did so in a situation where they made themselves look utterly absurd and could easily be ridiculed by a pointed or rude rejoinder from Eva’s mouth, often in the presence of another secretary or a male superior. Those fugitive glances that Eva otherwise had had to endure, which she could never get the better of, those furtive sidelong glances which she felt in her back and never could stare down, she finally could put paid to and get even for in the office of the Oslo Cinemas, to her great delight. Elias felt he had a basis for maintaining this in light of what Eva had told him about her work. But when her beauty faded, without her showing any bitterness incidentally, this pleasure disappeared, and all that remained was just routine office work; consequently, she looked for something else, something more rewarding, and she chose to become a social worker and take watches, and she had never regretted it. This very autumn, only three weeks ago, she had started at Norway’s College of Municipal and Social Affairs, after receiving the happy news early in the
summer
that she had been accepted. That meant that Eva Linde, who was now in her late forties, had a demanding three-year college course ahead of her. It also meant that he and Eva had to manage for the duration on one income, his teacher’s salary, which was not overly high but high enough to allow them to cope fairly well if they were thrifty and observed a sober lifestyle. In any case, Elias was pleased that he had a wife who, in her late forties, had made up her mind to provide herself with a good and, in her eyes, meaningful education, instead of going around being unsatisfied with her work, whether as a secretary or as – and this would have been absurd – a homebound teacher’s wife. Incidentally, he had often proposed, from the very moment they were married, in the mid-1970s, that she should resume her studies, but then there had been so many ifs and buts, what with Camilla and one thing and another, that half of it would have sufficed, Elias Rukla had thought.

Eva Linde lived her life in the apartment on Jacob Aalls gate, lying asleep behind the bedroom door as Elias Rukla sat up in the evening with his own thoughts. She went early to bed to be rested the next day, which for her included studies at the Social College, where her fellow students mostly belonged to a much younger generation than she did. Despite the fact that her beauty had badly faded, she was still an elegant lady. She knew how to dress, whether she went around in blue jeans, like her fellow students, or turned up in a grey suit and high-heeled shoes. An elegant lady, Elias Rukla could see that, as did also the others. Somewhat filled out, certainly, but
an
elegant, mature lady. She had, however, lost her charm for Elias Rukla, her husband. There had always been something affected about Eva, which he had loved. She had felt bothered by attracting men’s glances because of the way she happened to look, to be sure, but still she had not avoided becoming the prisoner of her own beauty. Though she had disliked the glances directed at her, she could not desist from reacting to them, and that she had done in such a charmingly affected manner. Her fragile beauty. Her whole manner had been based on her being perceived as indescribably beautiful. She had not been able to avoid playing up her beauty, because it was herself, after all, the way the outside world perceived her, and even though she did not regard it as having any value per se, and none at all to her, who of course couldn’t help it, her beauty was nonetheless what constituted her value and therefore had to be played up for her to attain any value at all. Forced to maximise her beauty, because she had had nothing else to maximise! And if she had had something else to play up, nobody would have cared about it anyway, at any rate when it came to comprehending her nature and being drawn towards it. She had known her value, in spite of not acknowledging it. When she
looked
at a man, she knew what it meant. She ought, therefore,
not
to look at men, but when she did she knew what it meant. That is, she knew she
could
look at a man and that it would cause, with almost the certainty of a law, the intended effect to occur. A chance thing and ridiculous, but that is how it was. When her beauty was gone, she knew that this would no longer occur automatically and that,
consequently
, she was spared having to deal with it. She was released from the prison of her beauty. Willy-nilly, she did not have to put on an act. Her beauty was gone and she could be natural. Not an affected woman, but a natural human being. She could appear as a straightforward and simple mature lady who impressed people with her courage and her determination to undertake a prolonged education at her age. Elias too. An elegant lady who wore blue jeans, like her young fellow students, or who could show up in a grey suit and high-heeled shoes whenever convenient, or appropriate to the weather. Her face a bit drawn, as an expression of a natural biological development that overtakes all, men and women alike, but which for a woman often means that she loses her fascination as exceptionally attractive, with often pathetic consequences if she does not realise this but fights it, trying to look like herself as a young girl instead of enjoying her life as shaped by biological rhythms. Elias Rukla could not deny that he was proud of his wife, and he often felt a hidden, but in reality deep, satisfaction to be living by her side, as he had already done for nearly twenty years. But not without missing her charm, or affectation, if you will.

It was a feeling that he could share with no-one. He could not tell Eva, I love your affectation, because she wouldn’t have cared whether he said so or not; it would have been a matter of indifference to her. He could have said, I like the way you toss your head right now (because it reminded him of the way the artificial Eva would toss her head, though not entirely, because now she was doing
it
by force of habit, without any connection at all to the game being played between a captive beauty and the men who were attracted by her, as before, but as a natural toss of her head, which nevertheless brought things back, reminding Elias of something he was searching for), and she would have liked it, although she would not have repeated her movement so that he would say it once more and she could hear him say it. For she was liberated from this now. But he missed what she had been liberated from and, in a strange way, felt it showed callousness on her part that he could not give expression to it.

All in all, Elias Rukla could not help catching himself thinking that Eva Linde’s naturalness had a callous tinge to it. Release from affectation showed sides to her suggestive of both indifference and greed. It was as though the demands beauty had made on her demeanour had tamed her natural inclinations. Perhaps there had always been these sides to her, without Elias Rukla seeing it, dazzled as he had been by her charm? What he had called being ‘spoiled’ or ‘pampered’ was perhaps an expression of precisely this, but when it appeared in a beautiful woman in her early thirties, say, it made a different, less direct impression than now, when the same appeared in a middle-aged lady close to fifty years old. On the other hand, it was quite clear that, insofar as Eva Linde freed herself from the tyranny of her own beauty, not unaided, but with the help of nature, one might say, this offered her the possibility of displaying her more vulgar sides, with the greatest pleasure at that, without having to pretend, but letting it all come out, unrestrainedly,
like
a natural human being. There could be no doubt that she was covetous. The way she would look at things owned by others with her drawn face showed a voracity that at times, quite simply, had a frightening effect on Elias Rukla, considering that he shared bed and board with her. Not the greed per se, but what it expressed and pointed to as far as their relationship was concerned. She was obsessed with things she did not herself own. When they were at a party she would loudly admire the hosts’ most exquisite articles, going back to look at them time and again and praising them in a loud voice, and the look she then cast at them was full of envy, something that was obviously appreciated by the hosts and made Elias Rukla set his mind at rest for a moment with the thought that she no doubt was doing it as a matter of politeness. But that wasn’t true. For she stood in exactly the same way when staring into the display windows of expensive boutiques for women’s clothes or exclusive furniture stores. She would stand there staring greedily at the luxury goods within. But she did not reproach him because they could not get these things for themselves. She did, however, show her greed for them, and when the greed lighted up her worn face and she stood there with her heavy, slightly overweight figure – to be sure, in her elegant grey suit – pressing her nose against the shop windows, it had a frightening effect on him. This glorious, no, uproarious female desire in a woman who did not play up her femininity but was simply an unaffected lady in her late forties. This craving for luxury that could never be satisfied and that, except when she
peeked
in someone else’s home or at the window displays, was never expressed as a wish for something she herself wanted to possess. Faced with this unaffected human being, who had renounced relating to her feminine artificiality but harboured such a voracious female desire, Elias Rukla was struck by a dreadful sense of estrangement, and he longed for what had been. Back to her graceful ways, which had captivated him as a matter of course and had therefore been a legitimate reason why he, Elias Rukla, could be close to her, but when she stood there, heavy-set and greedily staring, her nose flattened against the shop windows of luxury boutiques, he had in that moment no legitimate reason to be with her, and it was in the form of moments that this estrangement occurred to him. But at the same time he was struck by how dependent he had become on her, because when she stood there, craving all that luxury she did not express a single wish to obtain for herself, from him, but which she showed him she was fervently dreaming about all the same, even though she did not want it because it was impossible, he knew that, if she did not soon show him a bit of friendliness and trust that could offset this spectacle, well, the suspicion that this was the true expression of her real life, or that this greed for luxury was just a corner of this secret life that was turned away from him, but that she now all but demonstratively displayed to him, then his uneasiness vis-à-vis her would really destroy him. Was she sorry? As she stood there with her nose flattened against the window, an elegant, but rather drawn and flabby, wife in her forties?