Shyness And Dignity (5 page)

So it is his wife Elias Rukla is worried about, now that he has got himself into this painful position, which means that he must say goodbye to his entire social existence; it was impossible to conceive of any other conclusion to the
avalanche
that had overwhelmed him, and even if he could, it would not have changed anything, since he would simply have shrugged his shoulders at every other proposed solution and uttered a stubborn ‘no’. Her name is Eva Linde, and when Elias Rukla met her she was decidedly attractive, as she also was when he married her eight years later. That eight years went by from when he met her until she became his wife was due to the fact that, in the meantime, she had been married to his best friend. That was how he met her. As Johan Corneliussen’s woman. This was at the end of the 1960s, and they were all three in their twenties, with Elias Rukla approaching thirty, the two other, the sweethearts, coming up for twenty-four.

Elias Rukla had made the acquaintance of Johan Corneliussen in the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Oslo, Blindern – in 1966, it must have been. He happened to be there to fulfil the requirements for his university degree in language and literature, while at the same time preparing his thesis in Norwegian literature; by that time he had completed two minors, in Norwegian and history respectively, and he was still wavering between history and Norwegian as his major subject, continuing to do so even after he had begun to prepare his thesis in Norwegian, and therefore it suited him to choose elementary level philosophy as the third subject he needed in any case at that point. At the institute he met Johan Corneliussen, who was already then firmly set on taking a PhD in philosophy, and for some reason they became good friends, so good, in fact, that during certain periods they were practically inseparable, as they say,
and
, as far as friendships between students go, often quite correctly. They were extremely different, both in temperament and, not least, as far as sociability or social gifts were concerned, so their friendship might have struck others as rather peculiar, if it had not been for the fact that close friendships between young people of the same gender do tend to be peculiar.

Elias Rukla first noticed Johan Corneliussen at a lecture in a course on Wittgenstein which the two of them, both the elementary student and the PhD candidate, attended, something that ought to have made Elias Rukla understand that he had probably bitten off more than he could chew. Near the end of the lecture, Johan Corneliussen had posed a question, and the lecturer, a noted Wittgenstein disciple, had taken it very seriously. To Elias Rukla the question had appeared quite ordinary, having to do with a distinction between two concepts which, to him, had seemed quite simple, but the lecturer looked greatly taken aback and stood absolutely still for at least two minutes before he turned to the student who had asked the question and talked directly to him, both for the rest of the hour and longer, until a new group of students streamed into the seminar room for another lecture. This made Elias Rukla conclude that the student questioner was not just anybody, which proved to be the case. It was whispered at the Institute of Philosophy that he had a great future ahead of him. The publication of his PhD dissertation on Immanuel Kant would be a real event. Later, Elias Rukla often saw him strolling through the corridors on the ninth floor of Niels Treschow’s
House
at Blindern, where the Institute of Philosophy was located, and he would think, There goes a man my own age who will perhaps some day be known as a great philosopher. One day he saw him engaged in discussion in the middle of a flock of students. Elias Rukla noticed how he was basking in the lustre of his fellow students, not least the females among them. They paid attention to his arguments, and they obviously liked to be close to him and listen to what he said. Not only what he said, but also the voice in which he said it. They were in the middle of a discussion, and Elias Rukla noticed that when Johan Corneliussen had finished speaking and another student had the floor, either to add to what Johan Corneliussen had said or to contradict him, they were still looking at Johan Corneliussen. They were waiting for him to answer, looking forward to it with expectation, in fact, especially the female students. And it looked as though he enjoyed it, Elias Rukla thought, and to his amazement he noticed that he had not meant it to be a disparaging observation. He liked the self-satisfied and happy air of Johan Corneliussen as he stood there at the centre of a group of debating students. There was a sense of openness and vitality about it. Elias Rukla was sitting on a bench by himself, well outside the circle of the eagerly debating students, so he could not hear what it was all about, only that they were discussing, and he caught himself wishing he’d been part of this circle, however unnatural that seemed to him, since, after all, he was only a beginner in the subject, with nothing to contribute, and though he could have joined the circle as an interested
listener
, he felt that even that would appear obtrusive. But when a bit later, after the group had broken up, Johan Corneliussen walked past together with two other students, he caught himself envying them, because already now it seemed to Elias Rukla that to be on speaking terms with Johan Corneliussen would enrich one’s life. So when Elias Rukla a few days later was again sitting on this bench as Johan Corneliussen came down the corridor by himself and then flopped down on the same bench, Elias Rukla grew rigid with shyness. May I cadge a smoke from you? Johan Corneliussen asked. Elias Rukla nodded and handed him his tobacco pouch. Johan Corneliussen rolled a cigarette from Elias Rukla’s pouch and handed it back to him with a friendly nod. Then they went on sitting next to one another, Johan Corneliussen smoking. Neither of them said anything. Finally Elias asked, Why are you studying philosophy?

Johan Corneliussen scrutinised Elias Rukla, quickly and closely, but since he could not perceive any sign of laughter, either in his face or in his voice, he replied, And you? Why are you studying philosophy? To that, Elias Rukla replied, I’m only taking an elementary course. I need to straighten out my head before I get going on my thesis in Norwegian. My brain is deficient in order. — Hm, to learn a sense of order, well, I never! I never heard the likes. What are you writing your thesis on? Ibsen? — Yes, Elias Rukla replied, I’ve thought about it. —Haven’t I seen you in Jacob’s Wittgenstein seminar? —Yes, Elias replied, while noting that Johan Corneliussen used the first name of the famous Wittgenstein disciple who was
in
charge of the seminar and that it sounded natural coming from him. Johan Corneliussen evidently found the juxtaposition of Ibsen and Wittgenstein interesting, for he proposed that they go to Frederikke (the students’ canteen, bar, restaurant, dining room) to have a beer. They did, sat talking together for several hours over one beer after another, and when it was beginning to get dark, Johan Corneliussen proposed that they go to Jordal Amphitheatre to see VIC against GIC.

Through the city in the waning March light. Patches of ice and slush. A drizzly evening as they got off the tram and changed to a bus. The March wind and the desolate blocks of apartment houses. Then Jordal Amphitheatre. An ice-hockey stadium in Oslo’s East End. Floodlights. Johan Corneliussen and Elias Rukla watching from the terraces, together with three to four hundred other ice-hockey enthusiasts (Elias Rukla was not one). That grey, matte sheet of ice. Bundled-up players in helmets and leggings, hunched over and balancing on the ice in their short hockey skates and their colourful get-ups. The sticks. The black, flat puck (which is so difficult to follow, Elias Rukla thought). The sound of the runners against the ice. The sound of a fall as the players collide. The sound of the sticks against the ice. They found themselves in the middle of the GIC camp, which was the smaller. GIC, or Gamlebyen, was the ice-hockey club of those who lived in the Gamlebyen section of downtown Oslo. It was a venerable old club, but in decline. VIC, or Vålerenga, was the club of those who lived in the Vålerenga section, a little further north and east. Gamlebyen was on its last legs,
while
Vålerenga would have many brilliant years before it. Johan Corneliussen, who was not from Oslo but had come here from a railway town in the East Country, was therefore rooting for GIC. There he stood, together with Elias Rukla, cheering from the terraces. Taking out a small hip-flask, he offered Elias a nip, took one himself and passed the flask around. I like hockey better than football, he told Elias afterwards, but you mustn’t tell that to a soul, do you hear? You hear? Elias asked why he liked hockey better than football (with Elias it was the direct opposite). Quite simple. Rhythm, said Johan Corneliussen. The rhythm of hockey suits us better. —Us? Elias said. —Yes, us, Johan Corneliussen replied, unruffled, people of the 1960s. Hockey is sport’s answer to rock’n’roll. They were then sitting at the Stortorvet Inn, drinking more beer. They sat there till it closed, and afterwards they set out for the student village at Sogn, where they both lived, though in widely different parts, but they did not trek up there in order to turn in, in their several quarters, but to go to a party. Johan Corneliussen knew of an apartment where there was a party, and that was where they wanted to go. They rang the bell, Johan Corneliussen was welcomed by radiant faces, and they immediately mingled with the company. One beer after another. Well into the night, Elias Rukla discovered that Johan Corneliussen disappeared into a room with a woman; a little later he went to sleep at the table of the large communal kitchen that belonged to the apartment where the party was given. He was sleeping with his hands cupped around his head, at first hearing some sounds around him but then nothing.
He
felt someone touching his shoulder. He looked up, and there was Johan Corneliussen. The light barely filtered through the windows of this kitchen at the Sogn student village. In his hands, Johan Corneliussen was holding a bottle of frosty aquavit. Breakfast, he proclaimed. He began taking sandwich spread out of the refrigerator, herring, cheese. Boiled eggs. Elias Rukla went to the bathroom and splashed his mug with some water. The first batch of the students living there came crawling out of their rooms. They had all been at the party the evening before and were now offered breakfast. They sat down at the large kitchen table, men and women all mixed up, and some even let themselves be forced to sample the ice-cold aquavit and take a glass of beer, managing thereby to kill a day of study, while others said a firm no and were thus able to drag themselves down to Blindern. Among those who sat down at the breakfast table was the female student Elias Rukla thought Johan Corneliussen had disappeared into a room with during the night, just eating her breakfast, saying no to anything to drink. She was sitting beside Johan Corneliussen, but nothing suggested there was anything between them, or that there had been anything between them last night, for that matter. Johan Corneliussen spoke to her in a friendly way, on the merry side, marked by his hangover and now once more by rising intoxication, rising like the March sun outside, rising golden against the windows here at the Sogn student village, and she laughed with him as though she had not been together with him that night, or rather as though she
had
been together with him that night, but now it was
morning
, with the sun shining for a new day, which for her meant study at Blindern, for Johan a new day of increasing intoxication, which would suddenly die down in the late afternoon, leaving, one had to assume, a severe fatigue. But that was far away in the future. Right now they were sitting in a kitchen at the Sogn student village, Johan Corneliussen, Elias Rukla, and two more students, one male and one female, drinking aquavit and beer, but when the clock passed twelve, Johan Corneliussen began to get restless. Wanting to go on, he asked Elias Rukla if he would come along. They rushed out into the broad daylight, down the hills at the Sogn student village, towards fresh experiences. Johan had a bottle of aquavit, which was now half empty, not to say half full, in his inside pocket as they stumped down the hills to the city. Yes, it was one long, long hill all along down to Oslo’s city centre, and they staggered and stumped and fell and skidded down. At the bottom of the hill was a big city, the capital of a small country called Norway, as both of them knew, for their linguistic knowledge was immense, so they could tell right away what language was spoken by the natives who crowded in upon them from every direction. Indeed, they knew quite simply from the pitch, the fact that the natives’ voices rose so high at the end of a sentence, so as experts they could look at each other and proclaim in unison: It’s
Norwegian
, we are in Norway. Yes, they were in Norway, the capital of Norway with its Palace and Grotto, Parliament and Administration, Enevold Falsen, Frederik the Sixth, University, National Theatre, neon signs, department stores and flag-draped streets. Yes,
flags
were flying on Karl Johans gate, flags and banners randomly displayed, look, the Norwegian flag and the German flag, no, it’s a Belgian flag – anyway, they were hanging side by side all along the festive street; hearing shouts of hurrah and seeing a crowd of people waving their own flags at two black limousines coming down the bumpy Karl Johans gate, Johan Corneliussen and Elias Rukla, rather dazed, swerved into a side-street, and the side-street ran crosswise and was, very significantly, called Grensen, the Border. Yes, they had reached Grensen, and there came a blue tram, too, right enough, and off they ran after it and got the door smack in the face (Johan), so that he quite simply saw a sun and myriads of stars (as he told Elias, who stood bent over him, helping him up again), while the tram had stopped and the driver come running up, and now, NOW, Johan Corneliussen, having been helped to his feet again by Elias and standing upright, his coat open, succeeded in negotiating with the driver, making him actually go into the steering box and open the doors wide for them so they could triumphantly enter the promised car, which carried them through the downtown area before it once again began to rise, still with gloomy apartment blocks on both sides, and then they were suddenly in a built-up suburban area, and after an endless journey through this area the tram stopped altogether, at an end station, the driver left his car and Johan and Elias along with him. They had a long, instructive conversation with the driver, who was an expert on rock formations, varieties of stone, and volcanic deposits in the area within a radius of sixty miles, with this
point
as the centre of a circle. But when the tram was to start down again, with the same driver at the wheel, they said goodbye to their dear friend and set out on their own along the local roads, lined with private residences. And then, worse luck, they lost their way! The houses were so alike, all the roads about equally wide, and the snowbanks thrown up by the plough were everywhere of the same form and height, and since not a soul was to be seen, they were all at sea in the labyrinth where they found themselves. They walked for hours trying to find their way out but with no success, not until the late afternoon when the men came home from work in their cars, then they managed to stop one of these returning men after he had garaged his car and was running up to his well-protected residence at the end of a very nicely cleared path twenty metres away, and to get this somewhat distrustful man to explain to them how to solve the problem of getting back to the tramcar stop. It was high time, because in just an hour the downhill race in St Anton would be on television, Johan Corneliussen said. But they made it. They stormed into Krølle, which was Johan Corneliussen’s favourite restaurant at the time, five minutes before the downhill race started. This basement restaurant had a TV. It was enthroned on top of a cabinet on the wall. They sat down at one of the tables for two, Johan in such a way that he could look straight at the TV set, Elias directly across from him, so that he had to turn around to look at the same TV. The downhill race in St Anton. One after another they turned up on the screen, in helmets and Alpine gear, before they threw themselves down the mountainsides of (or
among
) the Alps. Heini Messner, Austria. Jean-Claude Killy, France. Franz Vogler, West Germany. Leo Lacroix, France. Martin Heidegger, Germany. Edmund Husserl, Germany. Elias Canetti, Romania. Allen Ginsberg, USA. William Burroughs, USA. Antonio Gramsci, Italy. Jean-Paul Sartre, France. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austria. Johan Corneliussen knew the strengths and weaknesses of all the racers and continually informed Elias that now, now, he had to watch out, for there, on that slope, Jean-Paul Sartre will have some problems, whereas now, just look how Ludwig Wittgenstein’s suppleness manifests itself in that long flat stretch, and look how the Romanian Canetti saves tenths of seconds by shortening that turn, almost as nicely as the Frenchman Jean-Claude Killy. After the race they felt a creeping weariness, and they began to nod over their empty beer glasses as hunger gnawed at them. They had no money. But Johan Corneliussen knew a remedy. He beckoned to the waitress and explained the embarrassing situation that he, a regular customer, and his good friend, Elias Rukla over there, had ended up in, and shortly there appeared two glasses of beer and two plates crammed with hamburgers, onions, potatoes and peas and carrots, while a cruet stand with different spices and sauces was brought to their table, among which you could recognise black HP sauce, yellow vinaigrette, red ketchup, and mustard. They ate. Drank and ate. And took a nip or two from the bottle, while observing absolute discretion. They conversed profoundly about films they had seen. About the white over-exposed light on the women in
Last Year in Marienbad
, and the white over-exposed light on the
deserted
coffee tables at daybreak in Fellini’s
8½
. Johan Corneliussen began to talk about the man from Kongsberg, who had in many ways cast long shadows upon his youthful life. It took a while before Elias understood he was talking about Immanuel Kant and that Kongsberg was obviously a translation of Königsberg. The man from Kaliningrad, Elias retorted, when he got it. Johan Corneliussen expressed his great love of simple sentences, which said no more than they said and where the first segment was identical with the last, and of the revelation he sometimes experienced when time and place panned out in such a way that it was possible to pronounce, with the greatest inevitability and beauty, a sentence such as an open door is an open door. They sat like this for several hours, but then Johan Corneliussen became restless and said they should go to another party. In the student village at Sogn once again. A different party this time, in a different apartment and a different building, with new prizes, as Johan Corneliussen said. They travelled up there, rang the doorbell, and Johan Corneliussen was beamingly welcomed by the one who opened. They blended into the warmth and the music. The apartment was full of students, all with glasses and bottles in their hands. Elias tried to stay close to Johan Corneliussen, but he slipped up and lost sight of him. Instead he found himself with a glass in his hand, as well as a bottle, from which accordingly he filled up the glass he had in his hand, even as also the bottle, which he had in his hand, the other hand, to be sure. Did you ever see the like! Two hands, each hand occupied with its own thing! The party moved
past
him without interruption, it was almost too much of a good thing, and Johan Corneliussen also moved past him and disappeared again, turned up and disappeared, together with so much else that also turned up and disappeared. Dark-haired girls from Sunnmøre and interior Sogn, fair-haired ones from Trysil, altogether far too much of everything. He tries to call out to the jamboree – after all, he’s also there, but somehow he cannot get in contact with anyone. Forsaken, forsaken. Where is Johan Corneliussen? Why isn’t someone talking to him, even though he calls out to them? When he woke up it was quiet. And dark. He had again woken up at the kitchen table of an apartment in the student village at Sogn. Someone had been kind enough to turn off the light so it was dark in the kitchen. But through the darkness there gleamed a small, faint glimmer of light coming from outside, and he understood that the night was coming to an end and that it was the weak early grey light of a new morning in the month of March he was now witnessing. By his side he could make out Johan Corneliussen, who was also sleeping there. He lay with his head smack on the table, snoring. It was completely quiet, apart from the fact that Johan Corneliussen was snoring, his mouth open. Elias Rukla was now utterly worn out. He realised that, for him, the party was over. He was black with wear and tear in his whole body. Still, he was glad that Johan Corneliussen, too, had settled down. He understood he had found a true friend. He nudged him, causing Johan Corneliussen to start up, awake. —I’m going now. Are you? Johan nodded, then collapsed again; his head fell on
the
table and he slept. Elias nudged him again. —Listen, should we go? Johan nodded and got up, abruptly and elaborately. They went into the hallway, retrieved their overcoats and put them on. They walked out into the early dawn and, their worn-out bodies cold and shivery, went down to a crossroads, where their ways parted. —We’ll meet again, Johan said. —Yes, Elias said.