My Struggle: Book 2: A Man in Love (16 page)

‘But I don’t want to go to Norway,’ I said. ‘That’s the whole point.’

She didn’t say anything, she was on her way to the posters in the showcases. She turned to me.

‘
Modern Times
is on!’ she said.

‘Shall we see it?’

‘Yes, let’s! But I have to get a bite to eat first. What’s the time?’

I searched for a clock. And found a small chunky one on the wall behind the box office.

‘Twenty to nine.’

‘It starts at nine. So we can make it. If you buy the tickets, I’ll go and see if I can get something in the bar.’

‘OK,’ I said. Dug out a dog-eared hundred-krone note from my pocket and went to the ticket window.

‘Have you got any tickets for
Modern Times
?’ I asked in Norwegian.

A woman who could not have been any older than twenty, with plaits and glasses, looked down her nose at me.

‘
Ursäkta?
’ she said. Excuse me.

‘Have – you – got – tickets – for –
Modern
–
Times
?’ I asked in Swedish.

‘Yes.’

‘Two please. At the back, in the middle.
Två
.’

To be on the safe side, I held two fingers in the air.

She printed the tickets, placed them without a word on the counter in front of me, straightened the hundred-krone note and put it in the till. I went into the bar, which was jam-packed, spotted Linda and squeezed in beside her.

‘I love you,’ I said.

I hardly ever said that, and her eyes beamed as she looked up at me.

‘Do you?’ she said.

We kissed. The bartender set down a small basket of taco chips in front of us and what looked like a guacamole dip.

‘Do you want a beer?’ she asked.

I shook my head.

‘Maybe afterwards. But by then you’ll probably be too tired.’

‘Probably. Did you get the tickets?’

‘Yes.’

I saw
Modern Times
for the first time at the film club in Bergen when I was twenty. There was one scene where I couldn’t stop laughing. Most people can’t remember when they last laughed, but I remember when I laughed twenty years ago, because of course it doesn’t happen that often. I remember both the shame of losing control and the pleasure of letting myself go. What started me off is still crystal clear in my memory. Chaplin has to perform in a kind of variety show. It’s an important performance, there’s a lot at stake, he is nervous and jots down the lyrics as an aide-memoire and slips them up his jacket sleeves before he goes on. As he steps onto the dance floor he welcomes the audience with a broad, sweeping flourish and the scraps of paper are sent flying. Then he is left standing there without the lyrics while the orchestra strikes up behind him. What should he do? Yes, he chases after them, improvising a dance to cover the fact that something has gone wrong, while the band plays the intro again and again. I laughed until I cried. But the scene moves into a different phase because he can’t retrieve the pieces of paper, however much he dances around, and in the end he
has
to start singing. He stands there in total silence, and when he does begin it is with words that do not exist, but they are similar because although the meaning has gone, the notes and the melody remain, and I was filled with joy, I remember, not only for me but for the whole of humanity, as there was such warmth there and it was one of our own who had produced it.

When I took my seat in the auditorium beside Linda this evening I was unsure what was awaiting us.
Chaplin,
well, yes. Something someone like Fosnes Hansen writes an essay about when the topic is humour. And would I still find what I had laughed at fifteen years ago funny?

I would. And in exactly the same place. He comes on, greets the audience, his crib sheets fly out of his sleeves, he dances round the floor, with his feet somehow
behind
him, in tow, he doesn’t lose contact with the audience for one second; the whole time he’s dancing and searching he nods politely to them. A tear ran down my cheek at the ensuing pantomime. Everything was so wonderful that evening, I thought. We were giggling as we left the cinema, Linda was happy that I was so happy, I imagined, but also for her own part. We walked hand in hand up the stone steps beside the Finnish Cultural Institute, laughing as we regaled each other with scenes from the film. Then it was along Regeringsgatan, past the bakery, the furniture shop and US Video, unlock the door and up the stairs to our flat. It was a few minutes after half past ten, and Linda could barely keep her eyes open, so we went straight to bed.

Ten minutes later the music blared out beneath us again. I had completely forgotten about the Russian, and sat up in bed with a start.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Linda said. ‘This can’t be true.’

I could hardly hear what she was saying.

‘It’s not even eleven o’clock yet,’ I said. ‘And it’s Friday evening. So we won’t get anywhere.’

‘I don’t care,’ Linda said. ‘I’m going to ring. This is damn well not on.’

She had barely got up and left the room when the music stopped. We went back to bed. This time I was asleep when it started. At the same unbelievable volume. I looked at the clock. Half past eleven.

‘Will you ring?’ Linda asked. ‘I haven’t had a wink of sleep.’

But the same thing happened. After a few minutes she switched it off and there was silence below.

‘I’ll sleep in the living room,’ Linda said

That night she turned on the music full blast twice more. The last time she had the audacity to play it for a full half-hour before switching off. It was ridiculous but also unpleasant. She was out of her mind, and had apparently developed a hatred for us. Anything could happen, we felt. But more than a week passed before the next incident occurred. We were putting some potted plants on the windowsill in the stairwell outside our door, this was a communal area and strictly speaking not any concern of ours, but on the floor above they had done the same, and surely no one could object to the cold staircase being brightened up a bit? Two days later the plants were gone. That didn’t matter so much, but the pots had once belonged to my great-grandmother, some of the few items I had brought with me from the house in Kristiansand when my father’s mother died – they were from the early 1900s, and so it was quite irritating that
they
had gone. Or had someone stolen them? But who would steal flower pots? Or had someone removed them because they took exception to our initiative? We decided to put a notice on the board asking if anyone had seen them. That same evening the notice was adorned with expletives and accusations written in blue ink and bad Swedish. Were we accusing the residents of stealing? If so, we could move out this minute. Who the hell did we think we were? A few days later I was assembling a nappy-changing table we had bought at Ikea, a bit of hammering was required, but as it was only seven in the evening I didn’t think this would be a problem. But it was: after the first bangs with the hammer there was a wild pounding on the pipes below, it was our Russian neighbour’s way of protesting about what she clearly regarded as a violation of house rules. But I couldn’t let her stop me finishing, so I continued. A minute later the door below slammed and she was outside ours. I opened up. How could we complain about her when we made such a racket ourselves? I tried to explain to her the difference between playing loud music in the middle of the night and assembling a table at seven in the evening, but this fell on deaf ears. With the same wild eyes and indignant gestures she stuck to her guns. She had been asleep; we had woken her up. We thought we were better than her, but we were not . . .

From that day on she had a set strategy. Whenever a sound carried down to her, even if it was only me walking heavily across the floor, she banged on the pipes. The reverberation was penetrating, and since the sender was not visible, like a kind of bad conscience in the room. I hated it; it was as though I wasn’t allowed to have any peace anywhere, not even in my own home.

Then, in the days before Christmas, all went quiet downstairs. We bought a Christmas tree from a stall in Humlegården; it had been dark, the air was laden with snow, and the typical pre-Christmas chaos reigned in the streets, with people racing past, oblivious to one another and the world. We chose one, the overalls-clad salesman pulled a net over it for ease of transport, I paid and lugged it over my shoulder. Only then did it strike me it might have been a trifle on the large side. Half an hour later, after innumerable stops on the way, I dragged it into our flat. We laughed when we saw it upright in the living room. It was enormous. We had bought a gigantic Christmas tree. But perhaps that was not so stupid, as this was the last Christmas we would be celebrating on our own. On Christmas Eve we ate the Swedish festive fare Linda’s mother had brought us, unwrapped presents and watched Chaplin’s
Circus
because we had bought ourselves a box set of all his films. We worked our way through the lot over the Christmas period, went for long walks in the holiday-empty streets, waited and waited. We forgot about the Russian, the outside world didn’t exist for the whole of the Christmas weekend. We went to see Linda’s mother, stayed there a few days, and on our return we started to prepare for a New Year’s Eve dinner with Geir and Christina and Anders and Helena.

I cleaned the whole flat that morning, went shopping for dinner, ironed the big white tablecloth, inserted the extra leaf in the dining room table and laid it, polished the silverware and candlesticks, folded the serviettes and placed bowls of fruit on the table, such that by the time the guests arrived at seven the place was sparkling and glittering with bourgeois respectability. The first to arrive were Anders and Helena and their daughter. Helena and Linda had got to know each other when Helena took lessons with Linda’s mother, and even though Helena was seven years older than Linda they had become the best of friends. Anders had been with her for the last three years. She was an actress; he was . . . well, a kind of criminal.

Faces flushed with the cold, they stood in the stairwell smiling when I opened the door.

‘Hi there, old boy!’ Anders said. He was wearing a brown leather cap with ear flaps, a large blue Puffa jacket and smart black shoes. Elegant he was not, but in some bizarre way he still blended in with Helena, who with her white coat, black boots and white fur hat most definitely was.

Beside them sat their daughter in her buggy, examining me with a serious gaze.

‘Hi,’ I said, looking her in the eye.

Not a muscle moved in her face.

‘Come in!’ I said, retreating a few steps.

‘Can we bring the buggy in?’ Helena asked.

‘Of course,’ I answered. ‘Will it fit, do you think? Or should I open the second door?’

While Helena pushed the buggy forward and coaxed it into position between the door frames, Anders removed his outdoor clothing in the hall.

‘Where’s the señorita?’ he asked.

‘She’s having a lie-down,’ I said.

‘Everything OK?’

‘Yes, fine.’

‘Good!’ he said, rubbing his hands. ‘So bloody cold outside!’

Helena came through the door, her hands gripping the buggy handle tightly. She activated the brake and lifted her daughter out, took off her hat and unzipped the red romper suit while her daughter stood stock still on the floor. Underneath, the little girl wore a dark blue dress, white tights and white shoes.

Linda came in from the bedroom. Her face was beaming. First of all, she hugged Helena, they held the embrace for a long time and looked each other in the eye.

‘How pretty you look!’ Helena said. ‘How do you do it? I remember when I was in the ninth month . . .’

‘It’s just an old maternity dress,’ Linda said.

‘Yes, but all of
you
looks so nice!’

Linda smiled with pleasure, then leaned forward and gave Anders a hug.

‘What a spread!’ Helena exclaimed as she entered the living room. ‘Wow!’

I didn’t quite know what to do with myself so I went into the kitchen as if to check something or other while waiting for them to come down to earth. The next moment there was another ring at the door.

‘So?’ Geir said as I opened the door. ‘Have you finished cleaning the place up?’

‘Didn’t know you two were coming,’ I said. ‘Thought we said Monday, didn’t we? We’re having a New Year’s party here, so I’m afraid it’s not very convenient right now. But, well, perhaps we can squeeze you in . . .’

‘Hi, Karl Ove,’ Christina said, giving me a hug. ‘Everything all right with you?’

‘Yes,’ I said, stepping back to give them more room as Linda came through to welcome them. More hugs, more coats and shoes removed, everyone went into the living room, where Anders and Helena’s daughter, who had begun to crawl around, was a welcome focus of attention for the first few minutes until the situation settled.

‘You keep up the Christmas traditions, I see,’ Anders said, nodding towards the enormous tree in the corner.

‘It cost eight hundred kroner,’ I said. ‘It’s going to stand there for as long as there is any life in it. We don’t chuck money around in this house.’

Anders laughed.

‘The boss has started to crack jokes!’

‘I crack jokes all the time,’ I said. ‘It’s just you Swedes who don’t understand what I say.’

‘Well,’ he said. ‘At the beginning at any rate I understood nothing of what you said.’

‘So you bought yourselves a nouveau riche Christmas tree, did you?’ Geir said while Anders started speaking pidgin Norwegian in the way that is so common in Sweden and which consists of a high-pitched
kjempe
, meaning huge, an occasional
gutt
, boy, which to Swedish ears sounds so comical, all pronounced in an enthusiastic tone that rises at the end of every sentence. It had nothing to do with my dialect, which they therefore assumed was
nynorsk
.

‘It wasn’t planned,’ I said with a smile. ‘It’s a bit embarrassing to have such a big Christmas tree, I have to confess. But it seemed small when we bought it. It was only when we got it here that it became clear how enormous it was. But then I’ve always had problems with my sense of proportion.’