My Struggle: Book 2: A Man in Love (77 page)

‘He didn’t look back,’ I said. ‘It’s as if his parents weren’t a part of his psychology, if you get what I mean. I’m left with the impression of some old grey people hugging the wall in a room somewhere in northern Norway, so old and grey that you can barely distinguish them from the furniture. And so alien to Hamsun’s later life that they have no relevance at all. But it can’t have been like that.’

‘Can’t it?’

‘Well, I suppose it could, but you know what I mean, don’t you? There isn’t a single portrait of childhood in Hamsun apart from in
The Ring is Closed
. Nor of parents. Characters emerge from nothing in his books. Without a vestige of a past. Was it because they actually had no meaning or because their meaning had been repressed? And so these characters somehow become the first mass-produced humans, that is without their own predetermining origins. They are determined by the present.’

I took a slice of pizza, cut the long threads of cheese holding it back and bit off a mouthful.

‘Try the dip,’ he said. ‘It’s good!’

‘You can keep the dip,’ I said.

‘When do you have to be there, by the way?’

‘Seven. It starts at half past.’

‘We’ve got an hour or two on our hands then. Shall we drive around for a bit? So that you can see some of your old haunts? I’ve got a couple of Kristiansand haunts as well. Mum’s uncle and his family lived in Lund. I’d like to pop by.’

‘Let’s have coffee somewhere else first. And then we’ll go. OK?’

‘There’s a café close by where we used to walk when I was a boy. We can see if it still exists?’

We paid and left. Strolled down to Hotel Caledonien. I told him about the fire there, how I had stood behind the barriers, gaping up at the black façade, where it was all burned out. We ambled past the containers in the harbour to the bus station, up by the stock exchange, across Markensgate and into some arty-type café. Despite the cold, we sat outside so that I could smoke. Then we walked to the car, drove first to the house in Elvegaten, where I had lived during the winter mum and dad got divorced. The house had been sold and renovated. Then we went to grandma and grandad’s house, where dad had died. Turned in the square in front of the marina, parked in the tiny street and looked up at the house. It had been painted white. The tables had been replaced. The garden was neat and tidy.

‘Is that it?’ Geir asked. ‘What a wonderful house! Attractive, middle class, expensive. I would never have believed it. I had imagined something quite different.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s it all right. But I have no feelings for it. It’s just a house. It doesn’t mean anything any more. I can see that now.’

Two hours later we parked in front of the folk high school where I was going to do the reading. It was situated in the middle of a forest outside Søgne. The sky was all black, everywhere stars twinkled and shone, somewhere nearby a river rushed and trees rustled. The sound of a car door slamming resounded between walls. Then the silence closed around us.

‘Are you sure it’s here?’ Geir asked. ‘In the middle of a forest? Who on earth would come here to listen to you read on a Friday evening?’

‘Who knows,’ I said. ‘But it is here. Nice, isn’t it?’

‘Oh yes. Full of atmosphere.’

Our footsteps crunched on the frozen gravel as we walked in. One building, a large white timber house that looked to be from the turn of the last century, was unlit. In the other, which was twenty metres away and at right angles to it, three windows were lit. Two figures were visible in one of them. They were playing the piano and violin. Then there was a large barn to the right, also unlit, where the reading was due to take place.

We wandered round for a few minutes, peered in through the darkened windows and saw a library and what seemed to be a living room. We followed the path, ended up by a stone bridge over a little river or stream. Black water and the forest like a black wall on the other side.

‘We’ve got to have a coffee or something,’ Geir said. ‘Shall we ask those two in there if they have a key?’

‘No, we’re not asking anyone anything,’ I said. ‘The event organisers will come when they come.’

‘We need to warm ourselves up a bit at the very least,’ Geir said. ‘You don’t mind us doing that, do you?’

‘Not at all.’

We entered the narrow house ringing with notes from the two young musicians. They must have been sixteen or seventeen. She had a soft beautiful face. He, the same age as her but pimply, ungainly and also flushed, did not seem happy to see us.

‘Have you got a key or something for these buildings? He’s doing a reading, and we’re a trifle on the early side.’

She shook her head. But we could sit down in the adjacent room, where there was also a coffee machine. So we did.

‘This place reminds me of school trips,’ Geir said. ‘The light in here. The cold and the darkness outside. And the forest. And the fact that no one knows where I am. No one knows what I’m doing. Yes, a kind of feeling of liberation. But there’s a lot of darkness. The atmosphere inside it.’

‘I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘For myself, I’m simply nervous. My whole body aches.’

‘Because of this? Because of your talk here? Relax, man! It’ll be fine.’

I held up a hand.

‘See?’ I said.

I was trembling like an old man.

Half an hour later I was shown into the hall where I was to give the talk. Another bearded lecturer-type, late fifties with glasses, received me.

‘Isn’t this wonderful?’ he said as we entered.

I nodded. It really was. Inside the barn there was a large gallery like a capsule, built to give optimal acoustics, with seating for 200 people. Art on the walls of all the rooms. There was a lot of money in this country now, I reflected again. I placed my bag against the lectern, took out my papers and books, shook hands with a few others I had to greet, among them the bookseller who had come to set up shop after the talk, a charming energetic elderly woman, before going downstairs for a walk in the darkness, to the river, where I smoked two cigarettes. Then I sat on the toilet for a quarter of an hour with my head in my hands. When I went back up there was quite a turnout. Forty, maybe fifty? That was good. And there was a brass band, too, who were going to play some Baroque music. They kept it up for half an hour, in the middle of the forest on a Friday night, and then it was my turn. I stood in the centre with everyone’s eyes on me, drank water, flicked through my papers, began to talk, hesitantly, swallowed words, my voice quivered, until I got into my stride and could talk freely. The audience was attentive, their interest streamed up towards me, I relaxed more and more, they laughed where they were supposed to, and I was filled with a feeling of happiness, for few things are more uplifting than talking to an audience who are on your wavelength, who don’t just wish you well but are also into what you are talking about. I could see it, they were vitalised, and when I sat down to sign books afterwards they all wanted to discuss what I had said, it touched something in their lives which they were enthusiastic to tell me about. It was only when I was walking over to the car with Geir that I came down to the ground again, to where I usually was, to the place where contempt flourished. I said nothing, just got in and stared at the road winding its way through the dark landscape.

‘That was good,’ Geir said. ‘You’ve got that down to a fine art. I don’t know what you were moaning about. You could travel round earning money from it!’

‘It went well,’ I said. ‘But I give them what they want. I say what they want to hear. I pander to them the way I pander to everyone and everything.’

‘There was a woman in front of me,’ Geir said. ‘She looked like a teacher. When you started to talk about child abuse she stiffened. Then you said the word they wanted to hear. Infantilisation. She nodded. This was a concept she could handle. It smoothed over everything. But if you hadn’t said it, if you hadn’t gone into detail, I’m not sure everyone would have spoken to you afterwards – I’m not. And what is paedophilia, if not infantile?’

He laughed. I closed my eyes.

‘And the brass band in the middle of the forest. Baroque music. Who would have expected that? Ha ha ha! It was a great evening, Karl Ove, it was. Almost magical. The darkness and the stars and the sough of the forest.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

We drove around Kristiansand, over Varodd Bridge, past the animal park, past Nørholm, Lillesand and Grimstad. Chatted about this and that, arrived in Arendal, where we strolled around on the Tyholmen peninsula, I had a beer in a pub and for no particular reason felt completely out of kilter. Being here, surrounded by familiar buildings around the harbour, with the silhouette of Tromøya island on the other side of the water, in a world so crammed with memories, felt good but strange, not least because Geir, whom I connected with the Stockholm part of my life, was with me. At around twelve we drove to the island of Hisøya, he showed me some places which I looked at without being able to muster much interest, among them a quay where they had hung out in his youth, then we drove to the estate where he had grown up. He parked outside a garage, from the boot I took my bag and the bouquet I had been given and followed him to the house, which was a similar type to ours, or at least from the same period.

The hallway was full of flowers and wreaths.

‘There’s been a funeral, as you can see,’ he said. ‘If you like, you can put yours in one of these vases.’

I did as suggested. He showed me the room where I would sleep, which actually belonged to his brother, Odd Steinar, but had been tidied up for me. We had a couple of sandwiches in the kitchen, I wandered round the two living rooms looking. He had always said his parents actually belonged to the generation before our parents’ generation, and when I saw how they had arranged the house I understood what he meant. Tablecloths, runners, rugs, there was something 1950s, deepest Norway, about it, and the same applied to the furniture and the pictures on the walls. A 1970s house furnished like a 1950s home, that was how it looked. Lots of family photos on the walls, a large collection of ornaments on the windowsills.

I had been in a house once before when someone had just died. It was total chaos. Here everything was as good as unaffected.

I had a smoke on the lawn. Then we said goodnight, I went to bed, I didn’t want to close my eyes, I didn’t want to meet what I met there, but I had to, I summoned all the strength I had to think about a neutral topic and fell asleep after a few minutes.

The following morning I was woken at seven by activity in the rooms above me. Njaal, Geir’s son, and Christina had got up. I showered, dressed and went upstairs. A man of around seventy with a kind face and friendly eyes came out of the kitchen and greeted me. It was Geir’s father. We talked a bit about how I had grown up here and how beautiful it was. He radiated goodness, but not in that open, almost self-exposing, way that Linda’s father did. No, there was also solidity in this face. Not hardness exactly, but . . . character. That was what it was. Then Geir’s brother came in, Odd Steinar. We shook hands, he sat down on the sofa and began to talk about this and that; he too was friendly and kind, but with a shyness his father didn’t have and Geir definitely didn’t. The father set the table for breakfast in the living room, we sat down and I kept thinking that his wife and their mother had been buried yesterday, and that it was inappropriate for me to be here, yet I was being treated with kindness and interest, any friends of Geir’s were their friends, their house was an open house.

Nonetheless, I took a deep breath as I left afterwards.

The flight home was in the afternoon, we had planned to drive around, go to Tromøya where I hadn’t been for a long time, not to Tybakken, where I had grown up, and then straight to the airport, but Geir’s father had insisted we should go back home first. It was Saturday, he would buy some shrimps at the harbour, I would have to experience them before I went to Malmö, we didn’t have shrimps like that there, did we.

So we got into the car and motored over to Tromøya. Geir talked about the places we passed, told anecdotes associated with them. A whole life emerged from this area. Then he told me about his family. About who his mother had been, who his father and his brother were.

‘It was interesting to meet them,’ I said. ‘Now I understand more about what you’ve been saying. Your father and brother, they have almost
nothing
in common with you. With your temperament. Your mind and your curiosity. Your restlessness. With your father and brother there was just kindness and friendliness. So where’s the connection? Someone was missing, and it was so obvious. Your mother must have been like you. Am I right?’

‘Yes, you are. I understood her. But that was also why I had to get away. Shame you never met her, by the way.’

‘I’ve arrived when it’s all over.’

‘The most solid connection between the three generations is probably that Njaal, dad and I all have the same head from the back.’

I nodded. We drove up the hills before Tromøya Bridge. Mountains had been dynamited, roads built, industrial plants established like everywhere in the district.

Beneath us I saw the little island of Gjerstadholmen, further behind it Ubekilen Bay. To the right, Håvard’s house. The bus stop, the forest below, where in the winter we had made ski slopes and in the summer walked down to the rocks to go swimming.

‘In there,’ I said.

‘Where? To the left? Jesus, you didn’t live
there
, did you?’

Old Søren’s house, the wild cherry tree, and there, the estate. Nordåsen ringvei.

My God, it was so small.

‘There it is. Straight ahead.’

‘Where? The red house?’

‘Yes. It was brown when we lived there.’

He parked the car.

How small everything was. And so ugly.

‘Not a lot to see,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s go on. Up the hill here.’

A woman in a white Puffa jacket was walking down pushing a buggy. Otherwise there wasn’t a sign of life anywhere.

Olsen’s house.

The mountain.

We had called it the mountain, but it was only a little hill. Siv’s house behind it. Sverre and the others’ house.