My Struggle, Book 6 Read online

  “True, but rational doesn’t come into it.”

  I pushed my plate away and leaned back.

  “Thanks,” I said. “That was delicious!”

  I needed a cigarette but held off until they had finished eating.

  Thomas looked up at me.

  “Smoke, if you want,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said. I lit up and gazed out at the dark blue ribbon of sea above the green hedge, the way it glittered on the horizon, where the sunlight erased everything like a bomb, and the sky, lighter in color because of the haze, rose up.

  It was such a fine day.

  They started to clear the table, I left my cigarette in the ashtray and gave them a hand, putting the plates on the counter next to Marie, who began to rinse them in the sink. She was pushing sixty but came across a lot younger, the way so many writers do; only now and then, in the briefest of glimpses, did her true age become visible in her face. The impression of the face and the face itself are two different things, interwoven, a bit like those drawings that look like one thing if you look at the shading and another if you look at the other parts, perhaps, apart from the fact that a face is so much more complex. Not only does it change from hour to hour depending on the moods that ebb and flow behind and all around it, but also from year to year depending on the kind of relationship you have to it. My mother’s face, for instance, appears mostly unchanged to me, what I see is “Mom,” the way she has always been, but then she can turn her head slightly in a certain way and all of a sudden, like a shock, I see that she has become elderly now, a woman approaching seventy with perhaps no more than ten years left to live. Then she can turn again and say something, and once more all I see is “Mom.”

  I sat down again outside. The cigarette was still burning, I put it between my lips and sucked so hard it made the filter hot. I looked up at the sky, then at Thomas as he came out with the box of raspberries in his hand.

  “We used to hear nightingales here,” he said, sitting down at the other side of the table. “Not that many years ago either.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  “They just vanished.”

  * * *

  Driving home an hour later, the sun hanging low over Denmark on the other side of the strait, I thought about those vanished nightingales. It was the perfect beginning for the novel I was going to write when My Struggle was finished. An elderly man, full of years, potters about in his garden on the Swedish island of Gotland, reads in the shade, goes for long walks in the woods or along the endless beaches, retires early to bed in the evenings. It’s summer, the sun beats down in the day, the vegetation is dry and scorched, and he’d is all alone with not a living soul for company. He thinks about a conversation he had more than thirty years before, sitting in the sun at a cottage on the Öresund coast, during which his friend Thomas, long since dead like so many of his friends are, told him the nightingales had vanished. It was the first he’d heard of it. Not long after, he saw a TV documentary about bees vanishing in the United States. From one day to the next they were gone, no one knew where, whether they had found some new place to go or simply died out. One Sunday, out with his family in the great beech woods outside the town where he lived at the time, they had seen hundreds of dead bats scattered everywhere on the ground. The newspapers carried reports of similar occurrences, flocks of birds falling from the skies, huge shoals of fish floating dead in the sea. Something was happening in the world and no one knew what. The fish, could it have been a volcanic eruption under the sea, gases rising and killing them off? Or was it caused by man? The birds, was some sickness running rampant among them? But then why would they fall down at the same time? Was it some kind of stress? The wild salmon disappeared, some suggested farmed salmon were to blame. Certain species of butterfly vanished – had there been a change in the environment so rapid that they had been unable to adapt? And then, in the space of a couple of summers, the great bird colonies stopped coming to their nesting grounds along the coast to the north. This time no one could even hazard a guess as to the reason why.

  Every night before he goes to bed he writes a few pages in a notebook, mostly for his own sake, his days out there on the island being so alike that without his notes everything would merge seamlessly into one. He notes down the things he does, the way he feels, what he sees, and now and then events from his past life, which in that way emerges unsystematically.

  That was the idea I had, and I elaborated on it in my mind as I headed south. In order to have the afternoon to myself I had taken the morning shift with the children, fed and dressed them and got them off to the nursery, and it was with that thought in mind that I had driven up to Thomas and Marie’s when I did, it would give me some time left over to spend sitting at a café in Helsingborg. I took a left, passing at first through a semi-industrial area that gradually transformed into detached residences followed by long rows of linked houses on both sides of the road, eventually going down a steep hill, at the bottom of which was the town center, the harbor glittering in the light of the low-hanging sun.

  I had been there once before with Linda and the children, it had been our first trip after I passed my driving test. Being a registered bad debtor, I was unable to borrow money or even rent a car in Sweden, so Linda had made the reservation in her name, it was a bulky, unmanageable vehicle which looked like a minibus. We came crawling into the town, my heart thumping in my chest, it was all I could do to steer properly, but at the same time I felt buoyant, driving gave me an immense feeling of freedom, as though being motorized solved all my many problems. Now I knew there were parking spaces at the far end of the expansive quayside area and I drove slowly in that direction.

  An enormous cruise liner lay at anchor off the pier. It looked like it could carry several thousand passengers. I locked the car and ambled off. On the other side of the strait, surprisingly close, was what I realized must be the castle at Elsinore. The thought that I was looking at Hamlet’s home made my spine tingle. I tried to eliminate everything that had since appeared in the world in the way of cars, boats, and buildings, to see only the castle in the landscape, to think of how enormous the distances were at that time, how little space people occupied within the world, how vast the gaps between them, and gazed across at the place where the young prince, broken with despair at the death of his father, seemingly at the hands of his uncle, had perhaps lain on his back in bed, staring up at the ceiling, tortured by the colossal meaninglessness that had come between himself and all things, his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, seated on a bench in the courtyard, casting their long shadows across the cobbles, drunk on light and boredom.

  I stood there staring toward the castle for a moment before turning and walking along the quayside toward the town. Here and there, tourists were leaning over the railing, peering down at the cool blue of the water. Maybe there were fish swimming around, or maybe it was the deep itself that fascinated them.

  The town center was situated at the foot of a steep ridge; this was the only town in Skåne I had seen with hills and rises like this. It gave a completely different sense of space. I entered the pedestrian street, at the bottom of which was a park; there, beneath tall, shady deciduous trees, I spotted a pavilion, and a few minutes later I was able to sit down and order a coffee. The other people at the tables were speaking English with American accents, they must have come from the cruise liner.

  I looked up at the treetops. The leaves were not yellow, but their green was not quite as fat and pastose as it had been in summer, it was drier now, and paler. All around me the sounds of the town swirled in the air. Tires rolling against asphalt, a rumble of car engines, footsteps, voices, laughter.

  Hamlet was written at the close of the sixteenth century. The earliest edition still in existence is from 1603. A few years ago I would have thought of that as being a long time ago. I didn’t any longer. The seventeenth century was only a few generations away. Goethe, for instance, must have ru
n into people who had been born in the seventeenth century. To Hamsun, Goethe would have been someone who died a generation before he was born. And to me, Hamsun was someone who died a generation before I was born.

  No, the seventeenth century wasn’t long ago at all.

  A waitress in a black apron crossed the road carrying a tray. The café itself was housed in a building on the other side. She skipped up the two steps to the pavilion, halted, and placed a cup of coffee, a small jug of milk, and a thin paper sachet of sugar on the table in front of me. I handed her thirty kronor and told her to keep the change, det var greit. She didn’t understand and began to rummage in her apron for coins. I held up my hand and said it didn’t matter. Tack, she said, and wheeled away.

  The coffee tasted bitter, it must have been standing for ages. It wasn’t what people were drinking in the hot weather.

  I lit a smoke and looked out at the rooftops across the way, a zinc-clad chimney reflecting the glare of the sun, though without its movement, making the light seem like it was emitted by the zinc itself, an inexhaustible source. The gray-black slating that surrounded it, the fire escapes disappearing down into the backyards on the other side.

  Everyone’s life contained a horizon, the horizon of death, and it lay somewhere between the second and third generations before us, and the second and third generations after us. We, and those we lived with and loved, existed between those two lines. Outside were the others, the dead and the unborn. There, life was a chasm without us. That was why a figure like Hamlet could be so important. He was a work of fiction, someone had made him up, given him thoughts and actions and a space in which to act, but the point was that fiction was no longer a valid dividing line, a valid distinction, the moment one stepped beyond the horizon of death. Hamlet was neither more nor less living than the historical figures who had once occupied the earth; in a certain sense anyone from then was fictional. Or, since Hamlet was made of words and ideas, the others of flesh and bone, was it only he and his life form that could overcome time and mortality?

  Does he rise now in his chilly chamber? Does he climb the narrow steps out onto the roof, to the parapets? What then does he see? The blue waters of the Öresund, the green land on the other side, the low-lying expanses stretching away and beyond. What thoughts does he have? Shakespeare told us. The earth appears to Hamlet as a sterile promontory. The air, this most excellent canopy, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, as he describes it to his two friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, is to him but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors, man but a quintessence of dust. This was what he saw over there at the castle. The English word vapor is the same one as was used of the darkened mind, and the space that opens out there, between the mind’s and the world’s darkening, appears like an abyss.

  I took my mobile out of my jacket and pressed Linda’s number. She answered right away.

  “Everything all right?” I asked.

  “Fine,” she said. “We’re in the park. The weather’s gorgeous! Heidi refused to walk, but we worked it out. When will you be home?”

  “Soon. I’m in Helsingborg. It’ll take less than an hour from here, I suppose. There’s the car to take back, though, and then I’ll have to walk. Do you want me to get some things on the way?”

  “No, I think we’ve got everything.”

  “OK,” I said. “See you. Take care.”

  “Bye,” she said, and we hung up.

  I sat for a while with the phone in my hand and gazed up the road. Two women wearing skirts and sandals and carrying bags made of some lightweight material came walking along the sidewalk. Behind them a man on a bike, a child squeezed into the kid’s seat against his back. Both had helmets on, the man wore glasses and a suit. I thought about Heidi and smiled. She invariably wanted to be carried. If it was up to her she would never walk a single step. She had always been like that, right from the start. I was so close to her then, after she was born. Vanja was jealous and claimed Linda’s attention as much as she could, while I carried Heidi around until she was eighteen months and John came along. It stopped then, our closeness to each other. Every now and again I felt a twinge of sadness about it. But that was how kids were, everything came in phases, and phases came to an end. Before long they would be grown up, and the children they used to be, whom I had loved, would be gone. Even seeing photos of them from as recently as a year before could make me feel sadness at the fact that the children they were then no longer existed. But mostly they took up so much of our lives now and whirled up our days with such intensity there was no room left for such feelings. It was all here and now with them.

  * * *

  Not without relief, I dropped the car key through the mailbox of Europcar an hour later; that both I and the car were still in one piece after a long day on the roads was by no means to be taken for granted. The sun shone against the tall black spire of Saint Peter’s church above me, while the street beneath my feet was shadowy and cold as I walked along. I went as fast as I could, feeling guilty as always about being away from the family, or rather about leaving Linda to deal with the children on her own. I couldn’t help it. I strode on, past the Hansa arcade, past Hi-Fi Klubben and Orvars Korvar, the hot-dog joint, before crossing over to the canal that ran through the little park, past Granit and Designtorget, across the bridge and onto the pedestrian street at the end of which towered the yellow-white Hilton hotel. The streets were busy, the tables outside both cafés were full, young girls chatting in pairs or small groups, some teenagers being boisterous, and a couple of men my own age, rather more subdued in body language and dress. All sat soaking up this unexpected summer’s day. I felt calm and excitement at the same time; it felt good, but underneath was anxiety.

  Our apartment was on the little square across the road from the Hilton. A steady flow of people from early morning to late evening passed our entrance door, which was tucked in between a Søstrene Grene store and a Chinese takeaway. On the square itself there was a fountain, the trickling sounds of which went on through the night, and a big octagonal fast-food stand that blared out soulful pop and eighties’ hits to its customers, mostly people from outside town, who sat at the tables stuffing themselves with grilled sausages and hamburgers, with bulging carrier bags at their feet. The benches a bit farther away were occupied by homeless people. Ours was the top apartment, on the sixth floor, with a balcony running its whole width at the front. Once, Vanja threw a lighter over the railing, and it had hit the ground and exploded, just missing a couple of passersby who leaped into the air and glared up at us while I waved my hands in apology, trying to tell them it was an accident and hoping they weren’t going to get angry.

  I glanced up at the railing, so high above the sidewalk, and got my keys out of my pocket. This involved another memory, for tucked in behind the plastic window tag attached to the key ring was a photo of Vanja and me, the two of us together on a boat, we were on our way to look at dolphins on the Canary Islands, she no more than three years old, holding my hand and wearing a white hat and a look of anticipation. I tapped the orange key card against the panel next to the door, there was a click, I pushed the door open and went inside, pressed the button for the elevator, and checked my phone while I waited. No calls, but I knew that already. The only people who would call my cell were Yngve, Mom, Tore, Espen, and Geir Angell. Each followed their own pattern, and none of them was due to call just yet. I spoke to Yngve and Mom about once a week, Mom on a Sunday evening usually. Espen I spoke to about once every couple of weeks, Tore maybe once a month. With Geir it was about twice a day. That was pretty much my social life outside the family. But it was enough, and it was how I wanted it.

  The elevator arrived, I stepped inside and pushed the top button, studying myself in the mirror as I slid slowly upward through the dark and narrow shaft that ran through the middle of the building. My hair had grown long over the summer and I now had a beard of sorts. My beard growth had never been impressive, the che
eks always seemed to remain bare, so every time I looked at myself in the mirror I kept wondering if it looked stupid or not. It was hard, if not impossible, to decide, there being no obvious criteria to apply. If I asked Linda she would just say it looked fine. Did she mean it? Impossible to tell. And obviously I couldn’t ask anyone else about so intimate and vain a matter. So a couple of weeks earlier I’d shaved it off. When I showed up at the nursery the next day, Ola, the only other person there of my age, father of Benjamin, Vanja’s current best friend, and a head of faculty at Malmö’s university, had stared at me and asked if there was something different. Hadn’t I had some facial hair or something? He was being funny, not referring to it as a beard, and it made me think shaving it off had been the right decision. But then, on the Friday, I picked up some of the photos we’d taken that summer. I sat with Vanja, Heidi, and John at the café at Triangeln where we went every Friday after nursery, they had ice cream while I sat with a coffee, and we looked through the photos together. One was of me standing on a beach over in Österlen with John on my arm. I looked unusually good, I thought to myself, there was something about the beard and the sunglasses that made me seem … well, so masculine. And with John on my arm to complete the picture, I looked like … well, dammit, yes, like a dad.

  There and then I had decided to grow the beard back. Only now, on my way up between floors, I wasn’t so sure. I was going to Oslo the next day to do interviews for the launch of the first book. This forced me into considerations about shirts, jackets, trousers, shoes, hair, and now beard. For the past few years I hadn’t been bothered about that sort of thing, hardly giving a thought to the clothes I wore, simply grabbing something to put on if I happened to be going out, which was basically only when I was taking the children to nursery or picking them up again, or if we went out somewhere with them on the weekend. I was living in a city where I knew only a handful of people and didn’t care much about what they might think. This gave me a sense of freedom and allowed me to run around in baggy old pants and big grubby coats, awful woolly hats, and sneakers, but now, from the end of summer on, with publication approaching and my first interviews in five years having all been arranged, it was a different situation altogether.