Shyness And Dignity (6 page)

And they did. Elias Rukla became Johan Corneliussen’s friend; they were constantly together and could be seen everywhere in each other’s company. Even after Elias was done with his basic philosophy and went back to his Norwegian major, which, for that matter, he had not entirely abandoned, having retained his seat in the reading room at the Nordic Institute even while he was studying for his philosophy exam. There is no denying that Elias Rukla admired his friend. True, he tried to hide this from his friend, as well as from others, but whether he succeeded is an open question. However, he did not hide it from himself. He was clearly aware that he admired his inseparable friend and that, to tell the truth, he was proud to be constantly near him, so near, in fact, that when the others caught sight of Elias, they looked around to see whether Johan Corneliussen was not there as well. He was also aware that when Johan Corneliussen appeared, the others also counted on him, Elias, being in the vicinity and glanced briefly sideways to confirm this as a fact, as part of the very phenomenon that was Johan Corneliussen. This flattered him, even though he fully realised that, to the others, he was a person who lived in the shadow of Johan Corneliussen. But anyway, since it pointed to the obvious
fact
that Elias Rukla was Johan Corneliussen’s friend, it had to mean that there must be something about him, too, in the eyes of the others. Elias Rukla himself often wondered what it could be. There must be something about him that caused Johan Corneliussen to prefer his company to that of others, who were seemingly both more witty, amusing and extrovert, and also more open vis-à-vis Johan Corneliussen than he was. But what that could be was a riddle to him, and he had better not worry too much about what it could be, he thought – for if I discovered what it was it would either disappear or change into its unsympathetic opposite, insofar as I then would show it in a completely different way than I do now when I do not know what it is, or it will turn out to be something inferior, something that shows both Johan and me in a not very flattering light, as, for example, the fact that what Johan likes about me is that I try as well as I can to hide how much I admire him, Elias thought. But the mere fact of his thinking this way made him feel embarrassed, and when this embarrassment came over him particularly when he was with his friend Johan Corneliussen, he would occasionally be extremely sullen, even though Johan Corneliussen might be bubbling over with high spirits, and at such times, they must have been an odd pair of friends: the cheerful, life-affirming Johan Corneliussen in the company of his sullen, grumpy shadow. But his sullenness was, of course, only due to his trying to hide that he was overwhelmed with gratitude because Johan Corneliussen was his friend and to his having such warm feelings for him that he felt shy and miserable when this
warmth
swept through him, flowing towards his friend on the other side of, say, the coffee table.

His friendship with Johan Corneliussen was enriching him. Johan Corneliussen’s appetite for life was enormous and caused the two of them to lead a very good but hectic life as students. With study, parties and discussion, and an aimless chase after life and happiness. Johan Corneliussen was so versatile in his interests, and moved so effortlessly among them, that Elias Rukla, who followed him for the most part, had never before had such an intense feeling of being alive. Johan Corneliussen moved without difficulty from ice hockey to Kant, from interest in advertising posters to the Frankfurt school of philosophy, from rock’n’roll to classical music. Operettas and Arne Nordheim. He would throw himself into it, his brain spinning feverishly, and he would analyse and whoop simultaneously, in one and the same moment. Music, ice hockey, literature, film, football, advertising, politics, skating. Plus downhill skiing, in which he took a special interest. Second-hand bookshops and Bislett. Film clubs and TV sets. Essentially he was a spectator. He did not go in for sports very much himself, but he was hungry for sports as a spectator. He was happy in the terraces at Bislett, and most of all in Jordal Amphitheatre, among the diminishing band of Gamlebyen fans, and in front of the TV set when the great downhill races in the Alps came into our living rooms up here in the extreme North. For Johan Corneliussen, living room in this case invariably meant Krølle, the basement restaurant in the immediate vicinity of the Uranienborg Church where he and Elias were very often to be found at the same table for
two
for several years to come, seated in the same position as the first time they met, Johan with his face turned towards the telly up on the wall, Elias with his back to it, half turned, so that he partly watched the skiers set off down the hill, partly listened to Johan Corneliussen’s expert and confident commentary. It was not the fact that Johan Corneliussen was interested both in philosophy and sports which fascinated Elias Rukla, because that was true of many, not least Elias himself. It was that he did not grade his interests, either emotionally or intellectually. He was equally enthusiastic about a well-executed downhill race as about a well-made film by Jean-Luc Godard and plunged into both with equally great analytical passion.

With Elias Rukla he discussed philosophy very little, and only when Elias was looking for some useful tips about his approaching examination in basic philosophy. He was reluctant to talk about Immanuel Kant. But Elias Rukla knew with what sense of expectancy his PhD degree (which was a thing of the remote future) was awaited. Hence Elias Rukla thought (often) that there was something incomprehensible about him. He felt that Johan Corneliussen was wasting his time by being so much together with him, doing so many things outside his field of study and, not least, expending so much energy and enthusiasm on what he did. He often had to admit that he could not understand his appetite for life. What had made a young man with such hunger for life throw himself into the study of philosophy? Do those with the greatest zest for life often choose to study philosophy? If that is so, why do the ones with the greatest hunger for life choose human
thought
as their field? Instead of, say, studying to be engineers? When Elias Rukla thought about this, it struck him that those of his classmates from secondary school who had begun to study engineering were not noted for any exceptional zest for life, even though they had chosen a profession which would set them up for becoming men of action. They were the ones who would construct and build, get the wheels to roll and the machines to run, and make the people under them obey their orders, because unless they were obeyed, the wheels would not turn, the machines not run, and the buildings not be built, one might say. But on reflection, Elias found that the classmates who had now become engineers possessed no particular appetite for life at all, they were merely good in school, but essentially quite unimaginative, well, quite conformist, and that was true about all of them, without exception, Elias thought. The only trace of imagination he had discovered among these would-be engineers was a general predilection for telling jokes and singing songs from the student revues in Trondheim. But Johan Corneliussen neither told jokes nor sang ditties from student revues. He was simply stuck on life. And he had plunged into a demanding study of the great philosopher Immanuel Kant, and the brief reports he had leaked to teachers and fellow students about his discoveries had aroused their highest expectations. This (still) young man, who wanted to take in everything, who did not let a party in the student village at Sogn that he knew of take place without at least dropping by, if only for a few minutes, to see what was going on, whether he was missing out on
anything
, and who, if he was missing out on something, could even so go back to his room to review a certain Kant interpretation, because then he knew at least
what
he was missing, what possibilities were lying in wait for this night, as befitted someone who, in other words, was extremely curious and was known for his great flair for gossip among his associates in the student milieu at Blindern and Sogn – this (still) young man, who would have an attack of panic because he was afraid to miss, due to other business, an important home match of Skeid (which was his team, not Vålerenga) or, for that matter, an absurd play presented by the Television Theatre, and who, on learning that Molde was organizing an annual jazz festival, with a line-up of international big guns in the bright light of summer, planned to go there, which he did (with a tent and all, but without Elias Rukla for his travelling companion, unlike their three big drunken binges for the sheer adventure of it in Copenhagen, going by the Danish line, where they slept on deck), this young man had as the basis of his life, the fixed point of his existence, the eighteenth-century thinker Immanuel Kant from the East-Prussian city of Königsberg on the Baltic. Elias Rukla never ceased to wonder about it. Behind that forehead of his he lives a quiet, contemplative life, he thought, something I simply cannot comprehend. And so he quizzed and quizzed Johan Corneliussen about his contemplative life with Immanuel Kant. Johan disliked being quizzed in this way and would get annoyed at times, but Elias Rukla did not give a tinker’s damn about that. He asked and asked, but Johan Corneliussen preferred to talk
about
something else, something that was going to happen, perhaps even the same evening. But now and then Johan Corneliussen did speak about what his life was based upon. Then Elias would prick up his ears, although he had to admit he did not grasp very much. After all, his knowledge of Immanuel Kant did not go beyond what an elementary student of philosophy had to know, and to grasp even that had cost him hard work. But he pricked up his ears. In any case, he understood that Johan Corneliussen was bound up with Time and Space, these two categories which are there, by necessity, in every thought we think. Here everything bumps up against its limit. Time. Space. That which was given in advance, and which Johan Corneliussen’s brain was pulling and tearing at, Elias Rukla presumed. Would not someone who could relate to this without cracking up possess an inward composure, display an air of being transfigured? Elias Rukla looked expectantly at Johan Corneliussen, his cheerful and generous friend. But Johan Corneliussen gave no answer to this. He kept his eventual meditations, as well as his eventual transfiguration, his priceless and possibly hard-earned inward composure, to himself. But he said that it was not Kant per se that interested him. Kant was the basis, but that was not what he was after in his PhD dissertation, which was still several years in the future. He was occupied by all the others, all those thousands of philosophers who had taken up a position towards Kant. It was the Kant literature, the literature
about
Kant. It was modern man’s dossier. By studying that, one was truly studying the possibilities of human thought. There was no
need
to study anything else. The literature about Kant contained everything that a curious and intelligent twentieth-century individual could imagine himself asking questions about. By means of Marx’s relation to Kant, you learned everything. That way alone you would be able to understand Marxism. The same with Wittgenstein. Studying how Wittgenstein works with Kant, how, with all due respect, he tries to evade him, you are immediately on the track of Wittgenstein’s secret. He himself was trying to join that numerous celebrated company – well, the end he had in view was that his PhD dissertation would in the fullness of time join this series of dossiers of human thought. But that was, of course, such a high aim that he was reluctant to talk aloud about it, he wasn’t a megalomaniac and was loath to be considered pretentious, being, after all, simply a twenty-eight-year-old from a railway town in East Norway, and he certainly had not
seen
the truth, in case someone should get that idea, but he was trying to come up with a few modest possibilities within this great continuous tradition constituted by two hundred years of humble and passionate interpretation of Kant. However, to get it right he had to take his time over it. Hence the slow pace of his studies. So slow that at the time he met Eva Linde he had already been studying philosophy for eight years, and even so he was far, far away from seeing the end of his study for the PhD.

By that time, however, Elias Rukla had seen the end of
his
study. In the autumn of 1968 he obtained his university degree in the humanities, and in the spring of 1969 he took the so-called pedagogical seminar, to prepare himself for a
career
in secondary school, the
gymnasium
. He moved from the student village at Sogn, having found a relatively reasonable three-room apartment in Jacob Aalls gate, took out a bank loan and bought it, even though he had not yet acquired a livelihood. That he did, however, in the course of the spring, at the Fagerborg school, where he was to start teaching in the autumn as a fully trained senior master, with the pedagogical seminar and all behind him. Johan Corneliussen went on as before, as a student admired by his fellow students of both genders. Now he was even a student leader, for a spirit of revolt was sweeping through the European universities at the time, and that turned Johan Corneliussen into a declared Marxist; but since Marx depends on Kant, as we have seen, it did not have any momentous consequences for Johan Corneliussen’s studies. He continued as before. He and Elias still stuck together, through thick and thin. Elias often visited Johan in the student village, and from there they set out on expeditions into the real world. Only one thing was changed, namely, that Johan Corneliussen suddenly insisted on introducing to Elias Rukla a young lady he had met. This was something new, for previously Johan Corneliussen had always kept the ladies ‘apart’ from their friendship. He had constantly ‘hooked up’ with women on their joint journeys through life’s labyrinths, and at student parties, and more than once he had even ‘dated’ one and the same young woman for several weeks, most often a fellow student he had captured, or let himself be captured by, and with whom he let himself be seen in the student canteen or other places, but without making much of it; he would rush straight up
to
Elias with his young lady in tow and settle down without any fuss, as if all three of them were old friends, and after a few weeks she was usually gone and he referred to her quite naturally as a good friend whom neither of them saw so often any more. But then one day he invited Elias for dinner in his little apartment in the Sogn student village, because he would like him to meet a young woman he had come to know.