My Struggle: Book 2: A Man in Love (34 page)

This had nothing to do with me, nothing of my life was in it, consciously or unconsciously, and that meant I couldn’t get involved in it, couldn’t drive it forward. I might just as well have been writing about the Phantom and the Skull Cave.

Where was the story?

One meaningless day’s work followed another. I had no alternative but to keep going, there was nothing else. The people I shared office space with were nice enough, but so full of radical-left goodness that I was left speechless when – having used the word ‘negro’ and immediately been corrected in conversation by one of them while waiting for the coffee machine to brew – I discovered that the man who cleaned the offices, the kitchen and the toilet for them was black. They observed solidarity, equality and consideration towards others in their language and spread a kind of net over a reality which continued on its unjust and discriminating path below them. I couldn’t say this. Twice there had been break-ins; one morning when I arrived the police were on the premises asking questions. Computer and photography equipment had been stolen. Since the main front door had not been broken, only the one into our offices, they concluded the culprit had to be someone with a key. Afterwards we sat discussing the matter. I said this was not a hard nut to crack. After all, there were several nameless drug addicts on the floor below. One of them must have got hold of the key. Everyone stared at me. You can’t say that, one of them declared. I looked at him in surprise. That’s prejudice, he said. We don’t know who did it. It could have been anyone. Just because they’re drug addicts and have a troubled past, it doesn’t mean they broke in here! We have to give them a chance! I nodded and said he was right, we couldn’t know for certain. But inwardly I was shaken. I had seen the bunch of them hanging around the staircase before and after the meetings they held, they were the types that would do anything for money, it wasn’t bloody prejudice, it was bleeding obvious.

This was the Sweden Geir had told me about. And now I missed him. This story was grist to the mill. But he was in Baghdad.

During this period I was still getting visits from Norway, one after the other they made their way over to Stockholm, I showed them around, they met Linda, we ate out, drifted, got drunk. One weekend in late winter Thure Erik was supposed to come over, driving the old banger he had once crossed the Sahara in, according to what he told me, never more to return to Norway. He did though, and had written a novel that meant a lot to me, it was entitled
Zalep
, which I liked so much, the thinking in it was so radical, so different from everything else in Norwegian novels because it was so uncompromising and because the language was so unique, so all of its own. The oddity was how much of the language turned out to be part of his character, or in harmony with it, which I did not pick up the first time I met him, for it was an extremely superficial evening at Kunsternes Hus, but I did on the second, third and fourth times, and not least during the weeks we stayed in two cabins on a wintry and deserted campsite in Telemark with a rushing river nearby and a starry night sky arched above us. He was a large man with enormous fists and a gnarled face, his eyes were alive and always freely revealed his mood. As I admired the novels he wrote I found it difficult to talk to him, everything I said was obviously stupid, could not hold a candle to what he was doing, but there, in Telemark, having breakfast together, trudging the two kilometres to the school together, teaching together, having dinner and drinking coffee or beer together in the evenings, there was nowhere to hide. You had to speak. He told me that the station before Bø was called Juksebø, and we laughed long and hard about that.
Bø
was the word for a settlement and
jukse
meant to cheat. I told him my jacket wasn’t a jacket, it was a
skinn
jacket, punning on the word for leather and make-believe. He laughed even louder, it was as easy as that. His brain raced, everything caught his interest and was refracted in him, which took it further, because everything in him moved towards a horizon beyond, he had such a great thirst for the extreme, and this made the world around him appear in a constantly new light, a thure-erik-lund light, yet it didn’t only apply to him, because the idiosyncratic nature of this was
also
refracted in him, in a tradition, in his reading.

Not many people approach the world with the same energy.

He was kind to me, I felt like a kind of younger brother, someone he took under his wing and showed things while curious to know what I was getting out of being here, or
herrre
, as he said. One evening he asked if I wanted to read something he had written, I said, yes, of course, he passed me two sheets, I began to read, it was an absolutely fantastic introduction, an apocalyptic explosion of dynamite in an old rural world, a child running out of school and into the forest, it was magical, but when I happened to glance up at him he was sitting with his head hidden in his great hands like an ashamed child.

‘Ooooh, it’s so embarrassing,’ he said. ‘So damned embarrassing.’

What?

Had he gone mad?

This man, with all of his character, as obstinate as he was generous, as movable as he was irrepressible, was going to visit Linda and me in Stockholm.

Two days before, we had to go to a birthday party. Mikaela was thirty. She lived in a one-room flat in Söder, not far from Långholmen, it was jam-packed with people, we found some room in a corner, talked to a woman who was the director of some kind of peace organisation, from what I could glean, and her husband, who was a computer engineer and worked for a telephone company. They were good company, I had a couple of beers, felt like something stronger, found a bottle of aquavit and started drinking from it. I got more and more drunk, night fell, people started going home, we stayed, in the end I was so plastered that I was making paper balls from the serviettes and throwing them at people nearby. There was only the hard core left, Linda’s closest friends, and if I wasn’t having fun and throwing balls at their heads I was babbling away about whatever occurred to me and laughing a lot. Tried to say something nice about everyone, failed, but at least my intention had been clear. In the end Linda dragged me out, I objected, now that everything was so cosy, but she tugged at me, I put on my coat, and then we were suddenly on our way down the street far below the flat. Linda was furious with me. I didn’t understand, what was the matter now? I was so drunk. No one else was drunk, hadn’t I noticed? Only me. The other twenty-five guests had been sober. That was how it was in Sweden: one aim of a successful evening was that everyone left the party in the same state as they arrived. I was used to people drinking until the ceiling lifted. Wasn’t this a thirtieth-birthday party? No, I had disgraced her, she had never been so embarrassed, these were her best friends, and there I was, her man, about whom she had said such incredibly nice things, there he was talking drivel and tossing paper balls at people and insulting them, completely out of control.

I lost my temper. She had crossed the line. Or else I was so drunk there was no line. I swore at her, shouted that she was terrible, all she ever thought about was making me toe lines, putting obstacles in my way, clinging to me as tightly as possible. It was sick, I yelled, you are sick. Now I’m going to fucking leave you. You’ll never see me again.

I walked away as fast as I could. She came running after me.

You’re drunk, she said. Calm down. We can talk about this tomorrow. You can’t go to town in that state.

Why the hell not? I said, pulling her hand off me. We had reached the tiny patch of grass between her street and mine. I never want to see you again, I shouted, strode across the street and went down towards Zinkensdamm Station. Linda stopped outside her flat and called after me. I didn’t turn. Crossed Söder, through the Old Town to Central Station, still fuming the whole way. My plan was simple: I would get on the train to Oslo and leave this shit town and never go back. Never. Never ever. It was snowing, it was cold, but the anger was keeping me warm. Inside the station I could barely distinguish the letters on the departures board, but after some intense concentration, which I also had to apply in order to keep my balance, I saw that there was a train between nine and ten in the morning. It was four o’clock now.

What should I do in the meantime?

I found a bench at the back and settled down to sleep. The last thought I had before falling asleep was that I mustn’t waver when I woke up, I had to stick to my decision, Stockholm was the past, irrespective of how sober I was.

A station guard shook my shoulder; I opened my eyes.

‘You can’t sleep here,’ he said.

‘I’m waiting for a train,’ I said, sitting up slowly.

‘Fine. But you can’t sleep here.’

‘Can I sit?’ I asked.

‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘You’re drunk, aren’t you. Perhaps the best would be to go home.’

‘OK,’ I said. Got up.

Whoops. Yes, still drunk.

It was just after eight. The station was crowded. All I wanted was to sleep. My head was terribly heavy, it burned in a kind of fever, such that nothing I saw took root, everything glanced off, I trudged down through the Metro corridors, got on a train, got off at Zinkensdamm, up to the flat, no key, so I had to bang on the door.

I had to sleep. Couldn’t give a toss about anything else.

Linda came running into the hall on the opposite side of the glass door.

‘Oh, there you are,’ she said, wrapping her arms around me. ‘I’ve been so afraid. I’ve rung every hospital in town. Has a tall Norwegian been brought in . . . ? Where have you been?’

‘At Central Station,’ I said. ‘I was going to catch the train to Norway. But now I have to sleep. Leave me be, and don’t wake me.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Do you want anything when you wake up? Coke, bacon?’

‘Couldn’t care less,’ I said, and stormed into the flat, tore off my clothes, got under the duvet and was asleep in an instant.

When I woke it was dark outside. Linda was sitting on the chair in the kitchen and reading beneath the lamp, which, like a wading bird standing on one leg, long and thin, with its head slightly slanted, was lit above her.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

I poured myself a glass of water and drank it in one swig.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Apart from the angst.’

‘I’m very sorry about last night,’ she said, putting the book on the armrest and getting up.

‘Me too,’ I said.

‘Is it true that you were going to leave?’

I nodded.

‘I was. I’d had enough.’

She put her arms around me.

‘I understand,’ she said.

‘It wasn’t just what happened at the party. It’s much more.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Come on. Let’s go into the sitting room,’ I said. Refilled my glass and sat down at the table. Linda followed and switched on the ceiling light.

‘Do you remember the first time I came here?’ I said. ‘To this room, I mean.’

She nodded.

‘You said you thought you were becoming
kjær
, fond, of me.’

‘It was an understatement.’

‘Yes, I know that now. But in fact I was offended.
Kjær
sounds very weak in Norwegian. You can be fond of an aunt. I didn’t know that
kjær
in Swedish was the same as
forelsket
in Norwegian. In love. I thought you said you were beginning to like me a little, and it might become something, given time. That was how I interpreted you.’

She gave a faint smile and looked down at the table.

‘I plunged in with both feet,’ she said. ‘Got you up here and told you what I felt for you. And then you were so cold. You said we could be friends, do you remember? I had invested everything and lost everything. I was so desperate after you’d left.’

‘But now we’re here.’

‘Yes.’

‘You can’t tell me what to do, Linda. That won’t wash. I’ll leave you. And I don’t mean about drinking. I mean about everything. You can’t do that.’

‘I know.’

There was a silence.

‘Didn’t we have some meatballs in the fridge?’ I asked. ‘I’m bloody famished.’

She nodded.

I went into the kitchen, shook the meatballs into a frying pan and put the water on for spaghetti. I heard Linda come in behind me.

‘There was nothing wrong this summer,’ I said. ‘I mean with the drinking. You didn’t mind then, did you?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘And it was fantastic. I am frightened of crossing lines, but I wasn’t then, not with you, it felt very secure. It never felt as if it was going to tip over and become manic or simply ugly. It felt very safe. And I’ve never felt that before. But now it’s different. We’ve moved on.’

‘Right,’ I said, and turned as the butter began to melt among the meatballs in the pan. ‘Where are we now then?’

She shrugged.

‘I don’t know. But it feels as if we’ve lost something. Something is finished. And I’m frightened the rest will disappear.’

‘But you can’t force me. That’s the best way to make it disappear.’

‘Of course. I know that.’

I sprinkled salt into the water for the spaghetti.

‘Are you going to have some?’ I asked.

She nodded, wiping away tears with her thumbs.

Thure Erik arrived at around two the next day, filled the whole of the tiny flat with his personality the second he stepped inside. We went to some second-hand bookshops, he perused what they had of old natural history, and then we went to Pelikanen, had dinner and drank beer until they closed. I told him about the night on the railway station and my decision to catch the train back to Norway.

‘But
I
was coming!’ he said. ‘Was I supposed to turn round and go back?’

‘That was exactly what I was thinking about when I woke up,’ I said. ‘Thure Erik Lund is coming. I can’t bloody go home now.’

He laughed, and began to tell me about a relationship that was so stormy that mine and Linda’s seemed like a midsummer comedy by comparison. I drank twenty beers that night, and all I can remember from the last hours is an old drunk with whom Thure Erik had struck up a conversation, who sat down at our table and kept saying I was so good-looking, such a good-looking lad. Thure Erik laughed and nudged me in the shoulder between his attempts to draw the man out about his life. And then I remember us standing outside the flat and him clambering into the back of his car to sleep as light snowflakes swirled around beneath the cold grey sky.