Doppler (6 page)

Excuse me, I say quietly after observing this scene for several minutes. What is this?

Düsseldorf turns to me. He looks at me and the Toblerone stupidly protruding from under my arm, and then he surveys the war landscape.

The Ardennes Offensive, he says. December 1944. Christmas Eve that year, to be more precise. The town’s called Bastogne. My father died there that day. He was shot driving a car like this. Düsseldorf holds up the car he is making. He was hit by a bullet in the left temple while delivering a battle update to General Manteuffel. It was twenty past two in the afternoon. It had snowed in the morning and is said to have started again an hour later. When the Offensive was over no one believed any longer that the Germans could hang on. The outcome of the war was as good as settled.

Düsseldorf turns his attention to the car and paints some tiny detail.

I survey the scene again. The clock faces on the church tower and the railway station actually show that the time will soon be twenty past two in this tableau, or scene, or whatever you call it. Düsseldorf is recreating his father’s death. It’s going to happen and it has happened and I notice that this fact makes an impression on me. He’s reconstructing an event that is imminent and yet also happened many decades ago.

I’m sorry to hear that, I say.

It’s OK, Düsseldorf says. It’s a long time ago. I never met him. It’s all about a moment in time. I’ve spoken to friends of his who survived. They said it happened at twenty past two. What sort of time is that to die? What sort of bloody time is that?

Perhaps it doesn’t matter, I venture.

I think you’re mistaken, Düsseldorf says.

OK, I say.

Düsseldorf keeps painting and I feel that the time to head for the woods is fast approaching, but instead of leaving I surprise myself by saying that my father is dead, too.

My father’s dead, too, by the way, I say. He died this spring.

I’m sad to hear that, Düsseldorf says. Was he a good man?

I don’t know, I say. I didn’t know him that well. But he photographed toilets in the last years he was alive. I don’t know if that’s good or not.

I think it sounds good, Düsseldorf says. You shouldn’t have let him die.

No, I say. I shouldn’t.

I’ve been given some sherry and I’m sitting on the opposite side of Düsseldorf’s model-making table watching him paint. With a pair of tweezers he’s holding the minute piece of plastic which will become part of the rear axle and he is painting it a pale green colour with a small brush. He tells me his father was stationed in Norway during the first part of the war. Here in Oslo. He met Düsseldorf’s mother and danced with her a couple of times and went for clandestine walks in the forest and got her pregnant. Afterwards he was ordered home and in late autumn 1944 sent to Belgium. He was supposed to have been a good officer and the Germans needed their best men for the Ardennes Offensive. It was seen as the last chance to halt the unfortunate downturn in fortune. He had originally come from Düsseldorf, and after Norwegian authorities had taken a softer legal line on names a few years ago Düsseldorf decided to take the town as his name. He’s proud to be the son of a German soldier, he says. Not because the Nazis had fought for a good cause, but simply because things are as they are. My father was a German soldier, he says. And there’s nothing you can do about it. But I have no reason to believe he was worse than any other soldier. On the contrary, I have some reason to believe he was a normal young man who along with millions of other normal young men had to take the consequences of being born into a given period of history. And since I never met him, I’ll honour him. I’m building this scene to honour him. It’s taken me six years. I’ve been doing it since my wife died. I started the day she was buried. I couldn’t talk to her about my father. She didn’t want to hear about him. I always had to pretend nothing had happened. And my mother never mentioned him, either. In a way I understand it, of course. There are more appealing things to talk about than the fact that you were impregnated by a German soldier occupying your country. It wasn’t until my mother died that I found some letters from my father, and moreover one from one of his subordinates saying that he was dead, and how it had happened. So when my mother and my wife died I could do as I wanted, and what I want to do is honour my father. And soon I’ll have achieved my aim. I’ve often thought that when this officers’ car is finished and I’ve made and painted my father I’ll put them on the correct spot in my model and then shoot myself through the head. Sometimes I think I’ll do that here at home and sometimes I incline towards going to Bastogne and doing it on the actual spot where my father died. I do know where it is, you see.

Düsseldorf gets up, still holding the tweezers with the plastic component and the brush, goes over to the model and points to a place at a crossroads. This is the spot, he says. And this was where he wrote to tell my mother about it. He points to a private soldier kneeling behind a battered wall. His name was Reiner. Decent man. He made model aeroplanes. I met him a couple of times before he died three or four years ago.

Düsseldorf sits down and continues to paint.

But something puts me off the whole idea, he says after a while. It’s sentimental and unoriginal. So I don’t know. I’ll have to see. And what about you? he asks.

I’m alright thanks, I say. Things are going well. I live in the forest with a moose. Not far from here. I’ve got a tent.

He looks at me.

May I ask why you live in the forest? he asks.

I don’t like people, I say.

He nods.

Nothing you can say to that, he answers, putting down the brush and proffering me his hand.

Düsseldorf, he says.

Doppler, I say.

The day before the football international against Spain my wife comes to my tent and says she needs a break and that she has booked a long weekend in Rome with a girlfriend.

Rome, yes, I say, thinking in quick succession of the Pantheon, the Colosseum and the cardinals screwing around while wondering whether women have souls or not, and of Nero, of course, who killed his closest family and let the city burn. I don’t reckon he liked people, either.

Rome in December, I say. Isn’t it too cold?

No, says my wife.

OK, I say. Good idea. But what about the kids? Who’ll take care of them?

You will, she says. And there’s a parents’ evening for Nora’s class on Thursday and Gregus has to take fruit to the nursery school on Friday.

Fruit, I say. Where am I supposed to get fruit from? That’s no good. I’ve got a tent to look after. And a small moose, on top of that.

Don’t view this as a request, my wife says. These are instructions. It’s something you have to do whether it suits you or not.

It goes without saying that our daughter is called Nora. My wife is partial to Ibsen, well, to theatre in general; she has no critical faculties, she watches anything and thinks it’s all good. She thinks theatre productions are good because they’re theatre productions and theatre is essentially good and our daughter had to be called Nora because Nora represents some of the earliest women’s liberation we know. As far as I’m concerned, she might just as well have been called Master Builder Solness. But I didn’t say that at the time. I was too nice. We both thought Nora was perfect even though my wife probably considered it more perfect than I did.

And now you’re Nora, I say, it rolled off my tongue.

I beg your pardon, says my wife.

You’re leaving your husband and children, I say. You’re Nora.

No,
you
are Nora, my wife says. You left everything six months ago.

I am not Nora, I say. I’m Africa.

You need help, says my wife.

How are you getting on otherwise? I essay. Are you eating enough? Are you in good shape?

You need help, she repeats.

After my wife had left, Bongo had a long bout of the sulks. My interpretation is that he’s jealous. He sees my wife as a rival, which as such corresponds with reality. But a wife is quite different from a pal, I explain. I’m married to her and have to act accordingly and of course I love her, too. But you and I are friends and we will always be friends and I can say loads of things to you that I could never say to her. Don’t worry, I say, stroking his underbelly.

You and me, kiddo, I say.

I can hear the noise from the match against Spain down at Ullevaal Stadium. Curiosity drives me further up the mountain to try and look down on the game with binoculars, but all I can see is a corner of the pitch and bits of one goal. I see a ball go in and conclude from the roar that it hasn’t exactly gone in Norway’s favour. Later I hear the same sound two times more and infer that the game is over. Norway is not going to the European championship in Portugal. Fair enough. We didn’t have any business going there anyway, or what do you think, Bongo? I say. And it’s not easy to know what Bongo thinks, it really isn’t, he keeps his cards close to his chest and doesn’t reveal his real thoughts about Norway’s manager, Semb. You can say whether you like him or not, can’t you? I say. But he’s silent. You can say whether he’s a charismatic charmer, can’t you, or whether he should go to hell? I say. Zero response. Then I choose to believe you think he should go to hell, I say. Correct me if I’m wrong. But he doesn’t correct me and I’m not wrong. It’s a bit of a shock, I say. You seem so friendly and soft and kind, but inside you’re carrying around a lot of aggression. You’ll have to work on that, I say. We’ve all got things to work on. I have my own crosses to bear. But I am a bit surprised that you go around wishing Semb ill. It’s not hard to understand why you don’t particularly like him, but to send him to hell? OK, well, why not? I suppose you know best.

I collect my son from the nursery school at the latest possible moment. I’ve been shying away from it the whole day. What should I say to him? How should I explain that for the last six months I’ve been living only three or four kilometres away, but have never got into contact? I’ve prioritised the forest. I’ve chosen to be in the forest with the silence and the moose rather than at home with him and his sister and mummy. I’ve chosen the forest over work and things like trips to Smart Club to buy pallets of toilet rolls and magnum bottles of Lactacyd so that the whole family’s nether regions can bear scrutiny at all times, and everything from Lego at half price to windscreen wash to high pressure washer and hot dogs on the way out. Gregus loves Smart Club. But now my member’s card has probably expired, and I’ve chosen to live in the woods so I‘ll have to explain that when I meet him again in a while. I chose the forest over Smart Club and all the other absurd places you have to go when you have a family and live in the capital of Norway. This is obviously impossible for a three-year-old to understand, or maybe he’s four, crikey, I think he’s four. Time flies when you live in a forest. But he won’t understand. The boy who sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and asks if we can go to Smart Club won’t understand anything and, standing by the nursery gate I know inside that I will have a problem explaining.

All the other children have been collected and Gregus begins to cry when he sees me. The nursery person doesn’t recognise me and I don’t recognise her. She asks me to prove my identity, which I can’t do because I no longer carry around any ID, but I’m good old Doppler, I say, and I can tell her anecdotes about last year’s Christmas party at the nursery if she wants, I say, while Gregus continues to howl and in the end I pull out my knife to cut off my beard, but the nursery person stops me and calls my wife who, I understand from the conversation, is on her way to the Pantheon by bus and as she passes through ancient Roman streets she confirms that I have a beard and otherwise look unkempt and wild.

Gregus calms down and we amble home with me trying to ask him normal questions about the manifold activities of a nursery day. He, for his part, wants to know why I look so weird. I say, as is the truth, that I’m living in a tent in the forest at the moment and that I’ve let my beard grow because it is simply easier to let it grow than to keep preventing it from growing. I also say that he will have a beard himself in a few years’ time, but he dismisses that as nonsense.

At home we meet Nora who also reacts with shock at my appearance. I say that I’ve been thinking of taking Gregus with me to the tent and letting him stay with me until his mother returns from Rome. Of course, she is also welcome to join us, I say, knowing very well that that is probably the last thing in the world she feels like doing. And she rejects my offer, as I thought she would. She’s on the home straight of a project about Tolkien, she says, and would like to spend the weekend applying the finishing touches. It irks me to see how nice and conscientious she is and I try to urge her to have a party instead. Just imagine the wild party you could have, I say. All alone at home and so on. You could invite the whole school, I say. Let it all hang out. Let people smoke and run amok and dance and be happy. You need that kind of party when you’re young. You need parties you can put in your locker and keep for the rest of your life, which define who you are. There’ll be days when you look back on the wild parties you’ve had with more satisfaction than the good grades you got in your project, I say. But she doesn’t believe me. You could have a little party, then, I say. My God, come on, girl. You’ve got the house to yourself. It’s a heaven sent opportunity. And then you can come up to the tent afterwards and sleep off the booze and have some moose meat. She just sends me an old-fashioned look.

I hope you’re not going to the parents’ evening tonight, she says, but I say that’s precisely what I’m going to do. Her mother told me to attend and attend I will. Is there anything in particular you’d like me to mention? I ask. Are you happy with the teachers? Are you being intellectually stimulated enough? Are you excused gym when you have your period?

She eyes me with disbelief.

‘I would appreciate it if you didn’t go to the meeting,’ she says.

I go to the meeting. Partly because my wife told me to and partly because I don’t want to hear later that Nora’s parents don’t care. The meeting has been disturbingly nicely organised. With the agenda written on the board and name cards on desks. I sit in Nora’s seat by the window in the first row, and even though it’s probably decades since there was any prestige in sitting in the front row I’m a bit depressed by that. I suspect Nora thinks it’s great sitting here and being the best. The class teacher, a lady in her fifties, starts by saying that this class is one of the most resourceful she has ever come across in her time in education and she lists examples and tells us about a class trip to the Baltic which is due to take place soon. Although the class has been selling waffles for more than a year in the long breaks, they still need to put in three thousand kroner each, she says.  It’s a lot to ask, she knows, and it is voluntary after all, but they’re going to both Tallin and Vilnius, two cities with quite a bit to recommend them, I’m given to understand. There is a wealth of history in the region, and a lot about the War and the Soviet Union, and a trip like this is a gold mine for such a strong class as this because it can be kept busy with it for ages afterwards. Reports can be written, wall charts and collages can be made, and furthermore contacts for life can be sealed.