My Struggle: Book 2: A Man in Love (27 page)

Long before I woke I knew something terrible had taken place. My face stung and ached. The second I woke I remembered what had happened.

I won’t survive this, I thought.

I had to go home, meet Tonje at the Quartfestival, we had booked a room six months before, with Yngve and Kari Anne. This was our holiday. She loved me. And now I had done this.

I smacked my fist against the mattress.

And then there were all the people here.

They would see the ignominy.

I couldn’t hide it. Everyone would see. I was marked, I had marked myself.

I looked at the pillow. It was covered in blood. I felt my face. It was ridged all over.

And I was still drunk, I could barely stand up.

I pulled the heavy curtain aside. Light flooded into the room. There was a group of people sitting outside, surrounded by rucksacks and suitcases, it would soon be time for farewells.

I smashed my fist against the bedhead.

I had to face the music. There was no way out. I had to face the music.

I packed my things in my case, with my face smarting, and inside I was smarting as well, I had never experienced such shame before.

I was marked.

I grabbed the case and walked out. At first no one looked at me. Then someone cried out. Then everyone looked at me. I stopped.

‘I apologise for this,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

Linda sat there. She looked at me with wide-open eyes. Then she started to cry. Others cried as well. Someone came over and placed a hand on my shoulder.

‘It’ll be all right,’ I said. ‘I was just very drunk yesterday. I’m sorry.’

Complete silence. I showed myself as I was, and there was silence.

How would I survive this?

I sat down and smoked a cigarette.

Arve looked at me. I essayed a smile.

He came over.

‘What the hell have you been up to?’ he asked.

‘I just had a skinful. I can tell you about it later. But not right now.’

A bus arrived, it took us to the station and we boarded the train. The plane didn’t depart until next day. I didn’t know how I would cope until then. On the streets of Stockholm everyone stared at me, and they gave me a wide berth. The shame burned inside me, it burned and burned and there was no way out, I had to endure it, hold on, hold on, and then one day it would be over.

We walked down to Söder. The others had arranged to meet Linda, we thought in the square I now know is called Medborgarplatsen, whereas at that time it was just a square, and there we stood, she cycled up, surprised to see us, we had arranged to meet at Nytorget, hadn’t we, that’s over there, she said, and didn’t look at me, she didn’t look at me, and that was fine, her stare in particular would have been more than I could have stood. We had pizzas, the atmosphere was strange, afterwards we sat on the grass with flocks of birds hopping around us, and Arve said he didn’t believe in the theory of evolution, in the sense that it wasn’t survival of the fittest, just look at the birds, they don’t do what they have to do, they do what they feel like doing, what gives them pleasure. Pleasure is undervalued, Arve said, and I knew he was talking to Linda because I had told him what she said, I had done what she asked me to do, they would get together the two of them, I knew that.

I went back to the lodgings, the others stayed to drink. I watched TV, it was unbearable, but I got through the evening, and fell asleep at last, with the bed beside me empty, Arve didn’t come back that night, in the morning I found him asleep in the stairwell. I asked if he had been to Linda’s, he said no, she had gone home early.

‘She sat crying and only wanted to talk about you,’ he said. ‘I drank with Thøger. That’s what I did.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ I said. ‘You can tell me, it doesn’t matter. It’s you two now.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re wrong.’

When we landed in Oslo the following morning, people continued to stare at me although I wore sunglasses and kept my face lowered as far as possible. A long time ago I had agreed to do an interview for the Norwegian Broadcasting Company with Alf van der Hagen, I was to go to his house, it would be a long interview and we would spend a bit of time on it. So, I had to go there. On the way I decided I wouldn’t give a damn and would say exactly what I thought to all his questions.

‘My God,’ he said when he opened the door. ‘What happened to you?’

‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ I said. ‘I just got very drunk. It’s the sort of thing that can happen.’

‘Are you still up for an interview?’ he asked.

‘Yes, yes. I’m fine. I just don’t look so good.’

‘No, you certainly don’t.’

When Tonje saw me she burst into tears. I said I had got terribly drunk and that was all that happened. Which was true. People stopped and stared at the festival as well, and Tonje cried a lot, but it improved, whatever had been holding me tight, not letting go of me, started to slacken its grip. We saw Garbage, it was a fantastic concert, Tonje said she loved me, I said I loved her and decided I would put all the past events behind me. I wouldn’t look back, wouldn’t think about it, wouldn’t let it have a place in my life.

Early that autumn Arve rang to say he had got together with Linda. I told you it would be the two of you, didn’t I, I said.

‘But it didn’t happen there. It happened later. She wrote me a letter and then she came here. I hope we can still be friends. I know it’s difficult, but I hope we can.’

‘Of course we can be friends,’ I said.

And it was true, I didn’t bear any grudges, why should I?

I met him in Oslo a month later, I was back to square one, couldn’t bring myself to say a word to him. Barely a word passed my lips, not even if I drank. He said Linda talked a lot about me, and she often said I was so good-looking. With regard to that, I thought ‘good-looking’ was not a parameter that was relevant to us, it was more like a curious fact, approximately the same as if she had said I was lame or a hunchback. Besides, it was Arve who told me, why would he pass on this comment? Once I met him at Kunsternes Hus and he was so drunk it was hardly possible to talk to him, he took my hand and led me to a table and said, look, everyone, isn’t he good-looking? I fled, bumped into him an hour later, we sat down, I said I had told him so much about myself while he had never told me anything about himself, I mean, intimate details, and he said, now you disappoint me, you sound like a psychologist in
Dagbladet
’s Saturday supplement or something, I said, OK. He was right, of course, he was always right, or always situated somewhere above arguments about right and wrong. He had given me a lot, but I had to put this behind me as well, I couldn’t live with it and at the same time live the life I had in Bergen. That didn’t work.

In the winter I met him again, when Linda was there, she wanted to meet me, and Arve led her to where I was sitting, left us in peace for half an hour, then came to collect her.

She sat huddled in a large leather jacket, weak and trembling, there was almost nothing left of her, and I thought, it’s gone, it no longer exists.

While I told the story to Geir he looked down at the table in front of him. After I had finished he met my gaze.

‘Interesting!’ he said. ‘You turn
everything
inwards. All the pain, all the aggression, all the emotions, all the shame, everything. Inwards. You hurt yourself, not anyone else out there.’

‘That’s what any teenage girl would do,’ I said.

‘No, they don’t!’ he said. ‘You cut your face to ribbons. No girl would ever cut her face. I’ve never heard of
anyone
doing it in fact.’

‘They weren’t deep cuts,’ I said. ‘They looked bad. But it wasn’t so bad.’

‘Who would do that kind of thing to themselves?’

I shrugged.

‘It was everything together building up into one climax. Dad’s death, all the media attention around the book, life with Tonje. And of course Linda.’

‘But you didn’t feel anything for her today?’

‘Nothing strong at any rate.’

‘Are you going to see her again?’

‘Maybe. Probably. Just to have a friend here, if so.’

‘
Another
friend.’

‘Yes, exactly,’ I said, raising my finger in the air to attract the waiter’s attention.

The next day the woman I was renting from rang. She had a girlfriend who needed to sublet her flat to reduce the rent.

‘What do you mean
sublet
?’

‘You get your room and then you share the rest of the flat with her.’

‘Doesn’t sound like anything for me,’ I said.

‘But it’s a fantastic flat, you know,’ she said. ‘It’s in Bastugatan. It’s one of the best addresses in the whole of Stockholm.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I can go and talk to her anyway.’

‘She’s very interested in Norwegian literature.’

I took her name and telephone number, rang, she picked up at once, just pop round, she said.

The flat really was fantastic. She was young, younger than me, and the walls were plastered with photographs of one man. It was her husband, she said, he was dead.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said.

She turned and walked through the flat.

‘This is your room,’ she said. ‘If you want it, that is. You’ve got your own bathroom, own kitchen, and then there’s a room with a bed, as you can see.’

‘Looks great,’ I said.

‘You’ve got your own entrance as well. And if you want to write, you just have to close the door here.’

‘I’ll take it,’ I said. ‘When can I move in?’

‘Now, if you like.’

‘So quickly? Right, I’ll bring my things over this afternoon then.’

Geir just laughed when I told him.

‘It’s impossible to come here without knowing a soul and get a flat in Bastugatan,’ he said. ‘It’s impossible! Do you understand? The gods like you, Karl Ove, that’s for sure.’

‘But Caesar doesn’t,’ I said.

‘Oh yes, Caesar does too. He’s just a little envious, that’s all.’

Three days later I rang Linda, told her I had moved, did she fancy a coffee? Yes, she did, and within an hour we were sitting in a café on the ‘hump’ overlooking Hornsgatan. She seemed happier, that was my first thought as she sat down. She asked if I had been swimming today, I smiled and said no, but
she
had, at the crack of dawn, it had been fantastic.

So we sat there stirring our cappuccinos. I lit a cigarette, couldn’t think of anything to say, thinking this would have to be the last time.

‘Do you like the theatre?’ she asked.

I shook my head and told her the only plays I had seen were traditional performances at the National in Bergen, which had been about as captivating as watching fish in the aquarium, and a couple at Bergen International Theatre Festival, among them a production of
Faust
in which actors wandered across the stage mumbling and sporting big black noses. When I said that, she said we would have to go and see Bergman’s production of
Ghosts
, and I said OK, I’ll give it a go.

‘Have we got a date then?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sounds amusing.’

‘Do bring your Norwegian friend along,’ she said. ‘And I can meet him as well.’

‘Right, I’m sure he’d love to come,’ I said.

We stayed for another quarter of an hour, but the silences were long, and she was probably dying to leave as much as I was. In the end, I put my cigarettes in my pocket and got up.

‘Shall we buy the tickets together?’ she asked.

‘Can do,’ I answered.

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Yes.’

‘Half past eleven here?’

‘Yes, that’s fine.’

For the twenty minutes it took to go from the hump to the Royal Dramatic Theatre we barely exchanged a word. It felt as though I could say everything to her or nothing. Now it was nothing, and presumably that was the way it would stay.

I let her order the tickets, and once it was done we started on the way back. The sun flooded the town in light, the first buds had appeared on the trees, there were people everywhere, most of them happy, as you are on the first decent days of spring.

As we crossed Kungsträdgården she squinted into the bright low rays of the sun at me.

‘I saw something odd on TV a few weeks ago,’ she said. ‘They were showing CCTV footage from inside a large newspaper kiosk. Suddenly one of the shelves started smoking. At first there were a few small flames. The assistant was unsighted where he stood. But the customer by the counter could see. He must have known something was going on because while he was waiting for his purchases to be rung up he turned to the shelf. He couldn’t help but see the flames. Then he turned back, took his change and left. While there was a fire burning behind him!’

She looked at me again and smiled.

‘Another customer came in and stood by the counter. By now the fire was well alight. He turned and looked straight at the flames. Then he turned back, finished what he had to do and went out. But he looked straight at the flames! Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Do you think he didn’t want to be involved?’

‘No, no, not at all. That wasn’t the point. It was that he saw the flames but couldn’t believe what he was seeing, flames in a shop, and so he trusted his brain more than his vision.’

‘What happened after that?’

‘The third person, who came in straight afterwards, shouted, “Fire!” as soon as he saw it. By then the whole stand was ablaze. By then it was impossible not to see it. Odd, eh?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

We had reached the bridge leading to the island where the Royal Palace was and zigzagged through the tourists and immigrants standing and fishing off it. Now and then over the following days I thought about the story she had told, gradually it detached itself from her and became a phenomenon in itself. I didn’t know her, knew as good as nothing about her and the fact that she was Swedish meant that I couldn’t interpret anything from the way she spoke or the clothes she wore. An image from her poetry collection, which I hadn’t read since that time at Biskop-Arnö and had taken out only once, when showing her photo to Yngve, was still imprinted on my brain, the one of the first-person narrator clinging to a man like a
baby chimpanzee
and seeing this in the mirror. Why that of all images had made an impression I didn’t know. When I arrived home I took out the collection again. Whales and land and huge animals thundering around a sharp-witted and vulnerable narrator.