My Struggle: Book 2: A Man in Love (64 page)

‘Of life, of opportunities, of living, of creating. Creating life, not literature. For me, you live in an almost frightening asceticism. Or rather, you wallow in asceticism. As I see it, it’s extremely unusual. Extremely deviant. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone, or heard of anyone . . . well, as I said, then I have to go back to the saints or the Church fathers.’

‘Stop right there.’

‘You did ask. There’s no other conceptual framework for you. There are no external characteristics, there’s no morality at stake, there’s no social morality, that’s not where it is. It’s in religion. Without a god though, that’s clear. You’re the only person I know who can take communion despite not believing in God and not commit blasphemy. The only person I know.’

‘No one else you know has done it, I suppose?’

‘They have, but not with purity! I did it when I got confirmed. I did it for money. Then I renounced the Church. What did I spend the money on? Well, I bought a knife. But that’s not what we were talking about. What were we talking about again?’

‘Me.’

‘Yes, that’s right. You have something in common with Beckett, in fact. Not in the way you write, but in the saintliness. It’s what Cioran says somewhere: “Compared with Beckett I’m a whore.” Ha ha ha! I think that’s absolutely spot on. Ha ha ha! And by the way Cioran was reckoned to be one of the most incorruptible people around. I look at your life and regard it as totally wasted. For that matter, I think that of everyone, but your life is even more wasted because there is more to waste. Your morality is not about tax declarations, as that idiot thought, but about your nature. Your nature, nothing less. And it is this enormous discrepancy between you and me which allows us to talk every day.
Sympatio
is the right term for it. I can sympathise with your fate. Because it is a fate, there is nothing you can do about it. All I can do is watch. Nothing can be done for you. There is nothing anyone can do. I feel sorry for you. But I can only view it as a tragedy unfolding at close quarters. As you know, a tragedy is when a great person goes through bad times. In contrast to a comedy, which is when a bad person goes through good times.’

‘Why tragedy?’

‘Because it is so joyless. Because your life is so joyless. You have such unbelievable reserves and so much talent, which stops there. It becomes art, but never more than that. You’re like Midas. Everything he touches turns to gold, but he gains no pleasure from it. Wherever he goes everything around him sparkles and glitters. Others search and search, and when they find a nugget, they sell it to acquire life, splendour, music, dance, enjoyment, luxury, or at least a bit of pussy, right, throw themselves at a woman just to forget they exist for an hour or two. What you lust for is innocence and this is an impossible equation. Lust and innocence can never be compatible. The ultimate is no longer the ultimate when you’ve stuck your dick in it. You have been allotted the Midas role, you can have everything and how many people do you think can have that? Almost no one. How many would turn it down? Even fewer. One, to my knowledge. If this isn’t a tragedy, then I don’t know what is. Could your journalist have made anything of this, do you reckon?’

‘No.’

‘No. He has his journo scales with which he weighs everything. Everyone is lumped into the same pot by journalists. That’s the basis of the whole system. But like that he won’t get close, not even close, to you or who you are. So we can forget it.’

‘It’s the same for everyone, Geir.’

‘We-ell, maybe, maybe not. Your distorted self-image and your yearning to be like everyone else also come into this.’

‘That’s what you say. I say that the picture you paint of me is one only you could have painted. Yngve or mum or any one of my relatives or friends wouldn’t have had a clue what you were talking about.’

‘That doesn’t make it any less true, does it?’

‘No, not necessarily, but I’m reminded of what she said about you once, that you big up everyone around you because you want your own life to be great.’

‘But it is. Everyone’s life is as great as they make it. I’m the hero in my own life, aren’t I. Well-known people, famous people, people everyone knows, they aren’t well known or famous in themselves, in their own right; someone has made them well known, someone has written about them, filmed them, talked about them, analysed them, admired them. That’s how they become great for others. But it’s just scene-setting. Should my scene-setting be any the less true? No, quite the opposite, because the people I know are in the same room as me, I can touch them, look them in the eye when we talk, we meet in the here and now, and of course we don’t do that with any of all those names swirling around us all the time. I’m the Underground Man and you’re Icarus.’

The waitress came towards us with the food. A piece of pork protruded from a sea of white onion sauce like an island on the plate she put down in front of Geir. On mine there was a dark heap of meatballs beside bright green mushy peas and red lingonberry sauce, all in a thick cream sauce. The potatoes were served in a separate dish.

‘Thank you,’ I said, looking up at the waitress. ‘May I have another please?’

‘A Staro, yes,’ she said, and looked at Geir. He unfolded the serviette over his lap and shook his head.

‘I’ll wait, thanks.’

I drained the last drop from the glass and put three potatoes on my plate.

‘That wasn’t a compliment in case you thought it was,’ Geir said.

‘What wasn’t?’ I said.

‘The saint image. No modern person wants to be a saint. What is a saintly life? Suffering, sacrifice and death. Who the hell would want a great inner life if they don’t have any outer life? People only think of what introversion can give them in terms of external life and success. What is the modern view of a prayer? There is only one kind of prayer for modern people and that is as an expression of desire. You don’t pray unless there is something you want.’

‘I want loads of things.’

‘Yes, of course. But they don’t give you any pleasure. Not to strive for a happy life is the most provocative thing you can do. And again this is not a compliment. Not at all. I want life. It’s all that counts.’

‘Talking to you is like going to the devil for therapy,’ I said, putting the dish of potatoes in front of him.

‘But the devil always loses in the end,’ he said.

‘We don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s not the end yet.’

‘You’re right. But there’s nothing to indicate that he’s going to win. At any rate, not that I can see.’

‘Even when God is no longer among us?’

‘Among us is the right expression. Before, he wasn’t here, he was above us. Now we’ve internalised him. Incorporated him.’

We ate in silence for a few minutes.

‘Well?’ Geir said. ‘How has your day been?’

‘It hasn’t really been a day,’ I said. ‘I tried to write a speech, you know the one, but it was just rubbish, so I’ve been reading instead.’

‘I suppose you could have done worse.’

‘Yes, probably. But I’ve noticed how angry I am at all that. You’ll never understand, by the way.’

‘What’s “all that”?’ Geir asked, putting down his glass.

‘In this particular case it’s the feeling I have when I’m forced to write about my two books. I’m
forced
to pretend it’s meaningful, otherwise it’s impossible to talk about them, and it’s a bit like patting yourself on the back, isn’t it. It’s repugnant because then I have to stand there talking in complimentary terms about my own books, and those listening are actually
interested
. Why? Afterwards they come to me wanting to tell me how fantastic the books are and what an unbelievably wonderful talk it was, and I don’t want to meet their eyes, I don’t want to see them, I want to escape from the hell, because I’m a prisoner there, do you understand? There is no worse fate than being subjected to bloody praise. Georg Johannesen spoke about “praise competence”. The distinction is redundant, it implies that valuable praise
exists
, but it doesn’t. And the higher the authority, the worse it is. At first I’m embarrassed, I have nothing to hide behind, and then I lose my temper. When people start treating me in that special way. You know what I mean. Oh no, shit, you don’t know what I mean at all! You’re right at the bottom of the ladder, aren’t you! You
want
to climb. Ha ha ha.’

‘Ha ha ha.’

‘That stuff about praise is not quite true, by the way,’ I continued. ‘If you say something is good, that has meaning. If Geir praises me, it has meaning. And Linda, of course, and Tore and Espen and Thure Erik. All those who are close to me. It’s all the outsiders I’m talking about. Where I no longer have any control. I don’t know what it is . . . All I know is that success is not to be trusted. I notice that I get angry just talking about it.’

‘There are two things you’ve said that I’ve taken note of and have made me think a lot,’ Geir said, looking at me with his knife and fork hovering over his plate. ‘The first was when you were talking about Harry Martinson’s suicide. He cut open his stomach after receiving the Nobel Prize. You said you could understand exactly why.’

‘Yes, but that’s obvious,’ I said. ‘Getting the Nobel Prize for literature is the greatest dishonour of all for a writer. And his prize was systematically called into question. He was Swedish, he was a member of the Swedish Academy, it was clear there was some kind of cronyism going on, that he didn’t really deserve it. And if he didn’t deserve it, the whole affair was a mockery. You have to be bloody strong if you’re going to get over that sort of mockery. And for Martinson, with all his inferiority complexes, it must have been unbearable. If that was why he did it. What was the second?’

‘Hm?’

‘You said there were two things I’d said which had stuck in your mind. What was the second?’

‘Oh, that was Jastrau in Tom Kristensen’s
Havoc
. Do you remember?’

I shook my head.

‘There’s no safer place for secrets than in you,’ he said. ‘You forget everything. Your brain’s like Swiss cheese without the cheese. You told me
Havoc
was the scariest book you’d ever read. You said the fall in it wasn’t a fall. He just let go, let himself go, gave up everything he had, to drink, and in the book that seemed like a real alternative. A good alternative, that is. Just letting go of everything you have, letting yourself go. Like from the quayside.’

‘Now I remember. He writes so well about what it’s like to be drunk. How fantastic it can be. And then you have the feeling it’s not such a big deal. I hadn’t thought about the lazy, unresisting side of the fall before. At the time I saw it as something dramatic, something far-reaching. And it was shocking to think of it as everyday routine, arbitrary and maybe even wonderful. Because it is indeed wonderful. The second day of inebriation, for example. The thoughts that come into your mind . . .’

‘Ha ha ha!’

‘You could never let go,’ I said. ‘Could you?’

‘No. Could
you
?’

‘No.’

‘Ha ha ha! But almost everyone I know has done. Stefan boozes all the time on his farm, doesn’t he. Boozes, grills whole pigs and drives a tractor. When I was at home this summer Odd Gunnar was drinking whisky from a milk tumbler. The pretext for filling it to the brim was that I was visiting him. But I didn’t drink. And then there’s Tony. But he’s a drug addict, that’s a bit different.’

From one of the tables on the other side a woman who’d had her back to us until now stood up, and as she headed for the door where the toilets were I saw it was Gilda. In the few seconds I was within her sight I bowed my head and studied the table. Not that I had anything against her, I just didn’t want to talk to her right now. She had been one of Linda’s best friends for years, they had even lived together for a while, and at the beginning of our relationship we spent quite a bit of time in one another’s company. She’d had a lot to do with the Vertigo publishing house for a period, I never quite worked out what she did there, but at any rate there were photographs of her on one of their covers, a book by the Marquis de Sade; otherwise she worked at Hedengrens bookshop a few days a week, and recently she had started a company with a girlfriend who also had some connection with literature. She was unpredictable and volatile, but not in any pathological way, it was more a surfeit of life, which meant you never knew what she was going to say or do. One side of Linda was a perfect match. The way they met was typical. Linda had spoken to her in the street, they had never seen each other before, but Linda thought Gilda looked interesting, went over to her and they became friends. Gilda had wide hips, a large bosom, dark hair and Latin features, in appearance she was reminiscent of a 1950s female type, and had been courted by more than one well-known Stockholm writer, but a conspicuous girlishness often shone through this façade, an ill-mannered sullen wild quality. Cora, a more fragile nature, had once said she was frightened of her. Gilda was with a literature student, Kettil, who had just begun a doctorate. Having had a proposal about Herman Bang turned down, he had gone for what they wanted, what they would not reject, namely Holocaust literature, which went through without a problem of course. The last time we had seen each other had been at a party at their place, he had just been to a seminar in Denmark where he had met a Norwegian who studied in Bergen, what was his name? I had asked, Jordal he had said, not Preben by any chance? I had said, yes, that was his name, Preben Jordal. I said he was a friend of mine, we had edited
Vagant
together and I had a high opinion of him, he had both wit and flair, to which Kettil answered nothing, and from the way he said nothing, the slight embarrassment that came over him, a sudden urge to fill my glass and thus create a distance to make the breakdown in communication less obvious, I gathered that Preben might not have mentioned me in equally glowing terms. Then the thought flashed through my mind that he had panned my last book with such vehemence, and twice at that, first in
Vagant
, afterwards in
Morgenbladet
, and that this must have been the topic of conversation in Denmark. Kettil was ill at ease because my name had been dragged through the mud. True, this was little more than a theory, yet I was fairly sure there was something in it. It was strange that I hadn’t remembered the panning straight away, but no stranger than my recognition of what lay behind it: Preben belonged to the Bergen section of my memory, that was where he was, while the panning belonged to the Stockholm period, the present, and was tied to the book, not the life around it. Oh, it had hurt, it had been like being stabbed in the heart, or perhaps back would be more apt since I knew Preben. However, I didn’t blame Preben so much, more the fact that my book was not infallible, it was not immune to that kind of criticism, in other words, it was not good enough, and at the same time I was also afraid this verdict would be the one that would be passed on the book, these words the ones that would be remembered.