My Struggle: Book 2: A Man in Love (65 page)

But surely that wasn’t why I didn’t want to talk to Gilda? Or was it? For me incidents like this lay like a shadow over all those involved. No, it was her company I didn’t want to hear about. It was some kind of link between publishing houses and bookshops, as far as I was informed. Some event management stuff? Festivals and stunts . . . ? Whatever it was I didn’t want to hear about it.

‘Nice evening at your place, by the way,’ Geir said.

‘Was that the last time we saw each other?’

‘Why?’

‘That was five weeks ago. Strange you should bring it up now.’

‘Ah, I see. I was talking about it with Christina yesterday, perhaps that’s why. We were thinking of inviting you all over soon.’

‘Good idea,’ I said. ‘By the way, Thomas is here. Have you seen him? He’s at the back there.’

‘Oh? Have you talked to him?’

‘Briefly. He said he’d come over later.’

‘He’s reading your book now. Did he say?’

I shook my head.

‘He really liked the essay about angels. Thought it should have been much longer. But that’s typical of him not to say anything to you. He must have forgotten you wrote it. Ha ha ha! He’s so terribly forgetful.’

‘I suppose he’s just immersed inside himself,’ I said. ‘The same happens to me. And, for Christ’s sake, I’m only thirty-five. Do you remember when I came here with Thure Erik? We stayed here drinking all day and night. As the hours passed he began to talk about his own life. He told me about his childhood, his mother, father and sisters, about generations of his family. Firstly he’s pretty damned good at storytelling, and secondly there were a couple of quite sensational things he said. However, even though I listened very carefully and even though I thought to myself, this is bloody fantastic, by the following day I had forgotten everything. All that was left was the narrative structure. I remembered that he had talked about his childhood, his father and his family. And that it had been sensational. But I couldn’t remember
what
it was that constituted the “sensational”. Not a thing! A black hole!’

‘You were drunk.’

‘That’s got nothing to do with it. I remember Tonje was always talking about something terrible that had happened in her life, many years ago, she was forever harking back to it, but she wouldn’t say what it was, we didn’t know each other well enough, it was
the
great secret of her life. Do you understand? Two years went by before she finally told me what it was. There wasn’t any alcohol involved. And I was completely and utterly present, I listened attentively to every word she had to say, and afterwards we discussed it at length. But then it was gone. A few months later nothing was left. I don’t remember a thing. And that put me in an extremely tricky position because this was so unbelievably painful for her, it was such a raw topic she would have left me if I’d said I was sorry, I couldn’t remember anything. So then I had to pretend I knew the whole story whenever it came up. And this forgetfulness can arise anywhere. Once, for example, I suggested to Fredrik at Damm that they should publish a book of Norwegian short prose, and in his next email he continued the conversation without referring directly to the idea and I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. It had totally gone from my mind. There are writers who have told me what they are writing about with great passion and intensity, and I have responded, chatted with equal passion for perhaps half an hour or an hour at a stretch. A few days later, totally gone. I
still
don’t know what my mother actually wrote her dissertation on. At a certain point you can no longer ask without causing great offence, right, so I pretend. I sit there nodding and smiling, wondering what the hell it was again. It’s like that for me in all areas of life. You may think it’s because I don’t care enough, or I’m not present enough, but that’s not true, I do care and I am present. Nevertheless, puff, gone. Yngve, on the other hand, can remember everything. Everything! Linda remembers everything. And you remember everything. However, to complicate matters, there are also things that have never been said or have never happened which I’m sure actually took place. Thure Erik again: do you remember when I met Henrik Hovland at Biskops-Arnö?’

‘Naturally.’

‘It turned out that he came from a farm very close to Thure Erik’s. He knew them well and talked a bit about Thure Erik’s father. Then I said that Thure Erik’s father was dead now. Oh? said Henrik Hovland, it was the first he had heard. But he didn’t have much contact with people in the area any more, he said. Nevertheless, he was obviously surprised. He had no doubt it was true. Why would I say Thure Erik’s father was dead if he wasn’t? Because he wasn’t. The next time I met Thure Erik, he spoke about his father in the present tense, with no hesitation or anguish. He was very much alive. So what had made me think he was dead? Enough for me to proclaim it as a fact? I do not know. I haven’t a clue. But it meant I was nervous whenever I met Thure Erik after that, for what if he had bumped into Hovland and Henrik had offered his condolences, and Thure Erik had sent him a bemused look, what was he talking about, well, your father, he died so suddenly, didn’t he, my father, where the hell did you get that from? Er, Knausgaard told me. Is he alive? Is that what you’re saying? But Knausgaard said . . . ? No one on earth would accept I said that by mistake, that I really believed it, because why would I believe it, no one could have told me, no other fathers of people I knew had died, so there was no chance of my being confused. It was pure fantasy, but I thought it was the truth. It’s happened a few times, but not because I’m a mythomaniac, I really do believe what I say. God knows how often I go round believing facts that are just nonsense!’

‘Good job I’m such a monomaniac and talk about the same stuff all the time. In that way I hammer it home and you can’t make a mistake.’

‘Are you sure? When was the last time you spoke to your father?’

‘Ha ha.’

‘It’s a disability. It’s like poor vision. Over there, is that a person? Or a small tree? Ouch, I’ve just bumped into something. A table. Aha, it’s a restaurant! Keep close to the wall on the way to the bar. Whoops! Something soft? A person? Sorry! Do you
know
me? Oh, Knut Arild! Oh shit! I didn’t recognise you straight away . . . And the terrible thought that arises from this is that everyone has such disabilities. Their inner, private, secret black holes which they expend so much energy on trying to hide. And that the world is full of inner cripples bumping into one another. Yes, behind all the attractive and less attractive, though at least normal and non-frightening faces we confront. Not psychologically or spiritually or psychically, but in a conscious manner, physiognomically. Defects in thoughts, consciousness, memory, perception and comprehension.’

‘But that
is
how it is. Ha ha ha! That’s how it
is
! Look around you, man! Wake up! How many comprehension deficiencies do you think there are just in here? Why do you think we have established forms for everything we do? Forms of conversation, address, lectures, serving, eating, drinking, walking, sitting and even sex. You name it, it’s there. Why do you think normality is so sought after if not for this very reason? It’s the only place where we can be sure of meeting. But even there we don’t meet. Arne Næss once described how, when he knew he was going to meet an ordinary, normal person, he would make a supreme effort to be ordinary and normal while this normal person, from his side, presumably exerted himself to the utmost to reach Næss. Yet they would never meet, according to Næss, the chasm that existed between them could not be bridged. Formally, yes, but not in reality.’

‘But wasn’t it Arne Næss who also said that he could parachute from a plane anywhere on the planet and know that he would always be greeted with hospitality? Always have a meal and a bed somewhere?’

‘Yes, it was. I wrote about it in my thesis.’

‘That must be where I’ve got it from. The world is small.’

‘At least ours is,’ Geir said with a smile. ‘But he’s quite right. This is my experience too. There is a kind of minimum common humanity which you meet everywhere. In Baghdad it was very much like that.’

Gilda came behind him across the floor in low heels and a flowery summer dress.

‘Hi, Karl Ove,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

‘Hi, Gilda,’ I said. ‘Very well. How about you?’

‘Fine too. Working a lot now, you know. How are things at home? With Linda and your little daughter? It’s terrible how time has flown since we last talked. Is she OK? Is she doing well?’

‘Yes, she is. She’s busy with her course at the moment. So I’m busy taking Vanja out in the buggy during the day.’

‘And what’s that like?’

I shrugged.

‘OK.’

‘I’m wondering about it myself, you see. What it’s like to have a child. I think they’re a bit repellent. And the enormous belly and the milk in your breasts – that bothers me, to tell the truth. But Linda’s happy?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Well, there you go. Say hello to her. I’ll ring her one day. Tell her!’

‘I will. Regards to Kettil!’

She raised a hand in a wave and went back to her seat.

‘She’s just taken her test,’ I said. ‘Did I tell you that? The first time she drove on her own she was behind a lorry and two lanes merged into one, but she thought she had time to overtake, accelerated and moved out, only to see that she couldn’t. Her car was forced against the crash barrier, ended up on its side and skidded along for several hundred metres. But she was unhurt.’

‘That one’s going to live to be an old lady,’ Geir said.

The waitress came and cleared the table. We ordered two more beers. Sat for a while without saying anything. I smoked a cigarette and manoeuvred the soft ash into a little pile in the shiny ashtray with the tip.

‘I’m paying today, just so that you know,’ I said.

‘OK,’ Geir said.

If I didn’t say straight out I was seeing to the bill he would, and when he had made up his mind it was impossible to change it. Once we had been out, all four of us, Geir and Christina and Linda and me, to a Thai restaurant at the end of Birger Jarlsgatan, and he had said he was going to pay, and I had said no, we should at least share, no, he said, I’m paying and that’s that. After the waiter had taken his card I had pulled out half the sum in cash and put it on the table in front of him. He made no move to take it, in fact, it didn’t seem as if he had even seen it. The coffee came, we drank it and as we got up to go, ten minutes later, he still hadn’t touched the money. Hey, take the money, I said, we’re sharing this one. Come on now. No, I’m paying, he repeated. It’s your money. You take it. So I had no choice but to pick up the money and stuff it back into my pocket. If I hadn’t it would have been left there, I knew. Then he smiled his most obnoxious I-knew-you-would smile. And I regretted not having paid. No sacrifice was too great for Geir when it was about not losing face. But from Christina’s face, which was so incredibly sensitive and betrayed all her thoughts, she appeared to be ashamed of him. Or at least found the situation embarrassing. I had never entered into open conflict with him. Wisely, perhaps, for there was something in him I would never defeat. If we had a competition to outstare each other, the way you do when you’re young, he would have held my stare for a week if need be. I would have held his as well, but sooner or later I would have thought this was unnecessary and looked down. He would never entertain such an idea.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘How has
your
day been?

‘I’ve been writing about the
Grenzsituation
, the border situation. To be precise, about Stockholm in the eighteenth century. How high the mortality rate was, how short their lives were and what they did with the lives they had, compared with ours. Then Cecilia came into the office wanting to chat. We went for lunch together. She had been out last night with her partner and his friend. She had flirted with the friend all evening, she said, and her partner had been livid when they got home, of course.’

‘How long have they been together?’

‘Six years.’

‘Was she thinking of leaving him?’

‘No, not at all. On the contrary, she wants children with him.’

‘So why the flirting?’ I asked.

Geir looked at me.

‘She wants to have her cake and eat it, obviously.’

‘What did you say to her? I assume she went to you for advice?’

‘I said she should deny it. Deny everything. She hadn’t been flirting, she’d just been friendly. Say no, no, no. And then don’t be so bloody stupid next time, wait for an opportunity to offer itself and go about it calmly and collectedly. I don’t blame her for doing what she did. I blame her for being inconsiderate. She hurt him. That was uncalled for.’

‘She must have known you would say that. Otherwise she wouldn’t have gone to you.’

‘I agree. Had she gone to you, on the other hand, it would have been to get advice about admitting everything, going down on her knees and begging for forgiveness and then sticking to her lawful husband from then on.’

‘Yes, either that or leaving him.’

‘The worst is that you mean it.’

‘Of course I mean it,’ I said. ‘The year after I was unfaithful to Tonje and didn’t say anything was the worst year I’ve ever experienced. It was blackest night. One long, endless bloody night. I thought about it all the time. Jumped out of the chair in alarm whenever the phone rang. And if the word infidelity was mentioned on TV I blushed from head to toe. I was on fire inside. When we hired films I studiously avoided anything connected with it because I knew that sooner or later she would notice me squirming like a grub whenever the topic came up. And the fact that I had been guilty destroyed everything else in my life, I couldn’t say anything with heartfelt sincerity, it was all lies and pretence. It was a nightmare.’

‘Would you own up now?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about the events on Gotland?’

‘That wasn’t infidelity.’

‘But it still torments you?’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘Cecilia wasn’t unfaithful. Why should she tell her partner what she was thinking of doing?’