Wilful Disregard (3 page)

She realized she was starving and bought a vegetarian hot dog at the kiosk outside Hotel Mornington in Nybrogatan. She finished eating it on the stroke of one. She waited for a further two minutes. Crossed into his street and walked along to his studio. Rang the doorbell. He opened the door. Gave her a clumsy hug, his gaze shifting uneasily. A new, thin-skinned and slightly shamefaced introspection had penetrated his usual good-natured joviality. The easy-going demeanour of old had deserted him. It was the first time they met each other alone and in his hung-over eyes there was a hazy awareness that anything they were about to undertake would have consequences.

She registered that his underpants appeared to be of the tighter-fitting type. They each took a chair at the big, solid desk covered in papers and books, switched on the tape recorder and started.

There were many who considered him obsessed with morality in his work, she ventured cautiously, to test the ground and get things going. Or perhaps by human beings and human nature, archetypal human behaviour?

That was the way he would prefer to describe it, he said, apparently appreciating the observation. Obsessed with humanity per se, yes. But obsessed was too negative a word, it was more a case of a detailed interest. The individual differences between people were only of interest to him for the light they shed on the humanity of human beings, which was what he was seeking. He sought the sign for the thing, as in Plato’s world of ideas. The human being as a human being. The chair as a chair, the body of all bodies.

This made him hopelessly passé in the eyes of those parts of the intelligentsia that had long since abandoned all forms of universality and human nature, Ester pointed out. The human of all humans could not be designated, they said, without turning out to be a white, European, middle-class man. The chair of all chairs did not exist because it was Western and from a particular era. And the body he spoke of was proto-fascist.

He passed no comment on this but said that the best way of seeking truth, in both art and science, was to force yourself to see things anew, as they were, pared to the bone, and by never assuming them or their forms to be self-evident. If you wanted to observe the movements of a human being, you should look at the skeleton. If you wanted to observe oppression, you should seek out the formula for oppression; any variations were only there to confuse your eyes and everything emanated from a single original phenomenon, both people and things.

Ester said that she entirely shared this view of the unifying principles of existence, the basic structure for everything to exist. The question was precisely how much notice to take of the critique of it.

Ester knew that Hugo was more concerned with how he wanted to come across to the readers than with worrying about whether she shared his view, and it was right that he should be. The fact that she had a secondary agenda for the conversation did not mean he had to. She would be patient and play a long game.

Ester changed tack and asked what he based his morality in, whether he judged actions in terms of consequences or principles. He did not seem to understand the question, upon which she explained that she sometimes reflected on whether we are in fact not all to some extent utilitarians, that is consequentialists, that is, judged things in terms of outcome, even when we claimed to be applying principles.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked sharply, with an air of irritation. ‘There’s no contradiction there, is there?’

Ester felt nervous but decided it would be more embarrassing to relinquish her argument than to see it through.

‘A consequentialist,’ she said, ‘is obliged to be against democracy if it turns out to have worse consequences than dictatorship. For her, there can be no intrinsic value in anything other than maximum well-being, whereas for the rights-based ethicist, intrinsic value is the only orientation point. The intrinsic value of freedom and autonomy.’

After every sentence she paused for a moment, but no response came.

‘What the rights-based ethicist then has to endure is the thought that her stance could have worse consequences than other stances, whilst still standing by and being able to justify the principle of the individual’s freedom and autonomy.’

Hugo’s face was expressionless except for a vague questioning look. Even absence of expression is an expression, noted Ester.

‘So how does the rights-based ethicist deal with that?’ she ploughed on, regretting the whole digression. ‘Isn’t it still the case that in the long run, the rights-based ethicist believes that the autonomy of the individual is the only thing that can produce acceptable consequences? And thus inevitably lands up in consequentialism, a form of rule utilitarianism?’

Hugo, his hands on the arms of his chair, rocked thoughtfully back and forth.

‘In the long run we’re all dead, as Keynes put it,’ he said.

‘And how do intrinsic values and principles arise in any case?’ said Ester. ‘That is, those things which the utilitarian shuns but on which the rights ethicist bases her whole approach? Isn’t it of necessity, by comparison with alternatives, presumed to be worse? But worse compared to what? Surely it has to be the outcome, entirely discounted by the rights-based ethicist, that is the point of comparison?’

Hugo’s eyes had started to wander. He said:

‘When they asked Zhou Enlai about the effects of the French Revolution almost two hundred years after it happened, do you know what his answer was? “Too early to say.” Isn’t that wonderful? “Too early to say.” ’

Hugo gave a sudden laugh. It was not of the inclusive variety.

‘But with perspectives that long we’re all dead, as you say,’ said Ester.

‘I’m an artist,’ said Hugo. ‘There’s a morality in aesthetics too.’

‘Tell me more.’

He said: ‘Aesthetics is a moral act.’

She said: ‘What does that mean?’

He said: ‘It means that aesthetics, art per se, has revolutionary power.’

She said: ‘Regardless of content?’

He said: ‘If it hasn’t, then it’s not art.’

She said: ‘So is that a definition?’

He nodded. She asked what the rest of it was, then, the stuff which was called art but wasn’t, because it lacked revolutionary power.

He said: ‘Crafts. Or rubbish.’

They moved on to talk about details of his work. She toned down the subject of the interview, I and You, as his answers turned out to consist mainly of impenetrable quotations or accounts of Buber. When they ranged more widely Hugo expounded on his text each time as though no question had been asked, and each time he appropriated the wording of the question as his own. Ester got the feeling she was providing the words for what he was engaged in and who he was, but that he simultaneously believed he was the one thinking them.

After three hours she thought she had what she needed to put together an article and turned off the tape recorder. Her head felt really tired and she looked at her watch. It was too early for dinner.

They sat and rested for a while and chatted of other things, small talk about a lovely violin that hung on his wall and about what was going on in the street below, which they observed as they got to their feet and stood beside each other at the window. She craved his body. She happened to mention that her own relationship had come to an end and that she was living with her mother while waiting for a flat. He fiddled with his paper clips and looked as though he wanted to suggest something. Ester said she planned not to start writing the article until first thing the following morning when her brain felt refreshed. Now it was jaded and tired.

‘Are you hungry?’ asked Hugo.

‘Yes.’

‘Me too.’

‘I only had a hot dog for lunch, just before I came here. A vegetarian one from the hot-dog kiosk down by the hotel.’

‘They have good hot dogs there.’

‘I’ve read about it in the newspaper,’ said Ester. ‘It’s quite famous, isn’t it?’

‘But I don’t eat much in the way of hot dogs. Do you?’

‘No. I hardly ever eat hot dogs.’

‘So there’s such a thing as a vegetarian hot dog? I had no idea. What are they made of?’

‘Vegetable matter, processed and compressed into a skin. It’s not exactly healthy but perhaps better than meat.’

‘Nutritionally?’

‘Yes. And morally.’

‘Better in utilitarian terms?’ he said and gave a warm, gentle laugh. ‘Or from a rights-based ethical standpoint?’

So he had been paying attention to what she said, after all.

‘I’ve taken up jogging again,’ he said. ‘This past week. But I immediately started to feel a strain in the inside of my knee.’

Ester thought he must have started jogging because he had noticed her looking at his body and loving him.

‘It could be your meniscus. Can I feel it?’

He extended his knee and she prodded it for a long time.

‘A few years ago I could jog pretty well. I’d like to start again. Perhaps we could jog together?’

‘As long as this isn’t some kind of injury.’

‘But you’re sure to run faster than I do.’

‘We’ll decide together how fast we’re going to run,’ said Ester.

He bent and stretched his leg a few times and said:

‘Mmm, aha, yes. So you don’t eat many frankfurters. What do you eat, then?’

‘Plants, mostly.’

‘Plants?’

‘And a prawn every now and then.’

‘Why plants?’

‘Because I can’t find any way to defend the eating of conscious life forms. And it may also prolong our lives.’

‘How long do you want to live?’

‘To around a hundred.’

‘That sounds a long time. Don’t you think it might get a bit tedious towards the end?’

‘No. It all depends on what you’re doing.’

He looked out of the window at the restaurant on the other side of the street. His usual haunt.

‘If you’re not in a hurry we could go and eat a few plants and talk over whether we’ve covered everything in our interview. The really interesting things often crop up afterwards.’

‘You’ve already said lots of very interesting things.’

He looked at her in a different way from before, with a sort of imploring intensity, and said:

‘Do you think so? Do you think I had some decent points to make?’

‘You certainly did. Obviously you say interesting things.’

She got the impression there was something weighing on him that he wanted to express and then hear her honest opinion, but preferably her corroboration.

‘For me it’s not obvious at all,’ he said. ‘I hear people say it sometimes but that’s not how it feels to me.’

‘Everyone knows and thinks you’re interesting. If anybody does express criticism, they do it in the knowledge of your eminence.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘I know so.’

She had put on her coat and hat.

‘How do you know?’ he insisted.

‘They find you interesting in the same way that I do.’ The words grated slightly inside her.

They would not have long to wait for the restaurant to open at five. In the meantime, he showed her books that had been important for the development of his ideas. In her heart of hearts she was not all that impressed by his ideas but his art was headstrong and the fact that she was in love lent even his ideas a certain sheen.

He had two copies of Camus’s
The Rebel
and gave her one of them, the one that had been looked after better and had a cover similar to that of the original, or at least to the way she assumed the original must have looked. It was French in a sallow sort of way, with a rectangle of red lines.

‘Camus has been important to me,’ said Hugo.

‘Camus is wonderful,’ said Ester. ‘I shall never forget how I felt when I read
The Outsider
. The style, the tone, the opening sentence. The economy of expression.’

‘Once upon a time I knew that whole page off by heart in French,’ said Hugo.

‘Why?’

Hugo was away with Camus now and gave an introspective smile.

Ester said:

‘Do you remember that dreadful sequence where his girlfriend asks if he loves her? And he replies that it’s immaterial.’

Hugo never followed up anything Ester said. Ester always followed up what Hugo said. Neither of them was really interested in her but they were both interested in him.

Ester made an internal note of his lack of curiosity and generosity, but did not let it influence the reverence she felt.

On the dot of five they went across the road to eat. They talked non-stop until ten o’clock, when they finished off the last of the wine. She thought that if they could keep a conversation going from 1p.m. to 10p.m., there was nothing to worry about. It meant the future was bright.

In the week that followed, Ester worked on the article for
The Cave
. She did it in the same heady state as, in what felt like another time entirely, she had written her lecture about him a month before.

Texts seek their own rhythm. It takes time. But at a certain point, a piece of writing is finished even for a person prepared to work on it indefinitely. This happens when it has become so distanced from the original idea that every reading comes as a surprise and the clarity comes spilling out.

She worked on the interview for more hours a day than she was generally capable of. She normally found extended bouts of writing too much for her. After a certain number of hours, her brain did nothing but querulously identify errors – the deletion of which she regretted the next day – or regurgitate hackneyed phrases.

Eight days after she received the commission, the long article had been completed, read by Hugo, discussed by the two of them in the company of Dragan Dragović, who criticized most of its content and displayed signs of jealousy in a variety of other ways, and submitted to the editorial team. They replied that they were happy with it and asked how she had produced it in such a short time.

‘Well, I had a deadline.’

‘But that’s extremely quick work.’

‘Were you expecting an inferior article or did you think I wouldn’t meet the deadline?’

‘What do you mean? We’re happy. It’s good.’

‘Thanks. I’m glad. But surely your editors can’t go around handing out commissions they consider impossible?’