“So I don’t think the kingdom of the dead there can be much like Fredrikstad, not exactly.”
He smiled again.
“I’ve never much wanted to go to India,” I said. “China, yes. Japan, yes. But India? Skinny cows and diarrhea?”
“There are so many people there,” he said. “People everywhere. Some places look like the streets in Blade Runner. A concoction of animals and people and high technology.”
“You know India’s overtaking China now in terms of population?” I said. “And they’re rising up the table of the world’s biggest economies. Everyone talks about China, but India’s where it’s all happening. Or at least it’s happening there too.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “But it’s the poverty that’s so striking. It takes it out of you, seeing all that suffering. It’s such a spiritual culture, everything’s in the hands of the gods, so they accept poverty in a completely different way.”
Again, there was a lull. Egil was a big, thickly built man with next to no charisma, comfortable in conversation, attentive to what others had to say, but never stamping his mark, avoiding anything that might be difficult.
Gutless, many would say.
Too nice for his own good, I thought now. But I liked him all the same. It hardly mattered what book or film I talked about, he’d read it or seen it.
He smiled to himself and drained his drink.
“Anyway, how’s the book going?” he said, still without looking at me.
“It’s coming along,” I said, leaning forward to pick up the bottle, pouring him another in the glass he held out almost simultaneously, and then one for myself.
Why had I told him about my book? It was a huge, huge mistake. But I’d been drunk and it had felt as if the book was nearly finished then, and damn good at that.
“Smoke, if you want,” I said. “I’ll get you an ashtray.”
I got to my feet and went out into the kitchen. Tove was there. She was staring out of the window, her hands flat against the work surface.
“How are you feeling?” I said.
“Is that Egil you’re talking to?” she asked without turning round.
“Yes,” I said.
“Why didn’t you come and get me? He’s my friend too.”
“I didn’t know where you were,” I said. “Anyway, I thought you were busy.”
She turned now and looked at me, her face expressionless, before leaving the room. A moment later I heard her voice in the study.
The sky farther out over the sea had cleared up and was blue with patches of thin white cloud, not gray and heavy as it was above the land. I thought I’d give them a few minutes on their own and stood looking out. A magpie flew down from the apple tree and landed on the grass, where it stalked a few steps, like a man with his hands behind his back, a man who saw something and bent down to see what it was.
Gulls cried down at the bay, while a muffled, irregular thud repeated at the rear of the house. It sounded like the boys were playing football.
I went into the empty living room and looked out of the window there. Sure enough, there they were on the lawn, kicking the ball about between them.
A feeling of satisfaction came over me and then vanished again.
I went through the house and knocked on Ingvild’s door.
“Yes?” she said from inside, her voice lackluster. I opened the door and went in. She was lying on her stomach with her laptop closed in front of her.
“What are you up to?” I said.
“Nothing,” she said.
I could have asked her why she closed her laptop the minute I came in, only then she would feel like I was accusing her of something, and I wanted to talk to her, so I didn’t mention it.
“How were things with Granny?” I said.
“Good, I think,” she said, and sat up. “She gets mixed up sometimes, but it’s been like that for a while now.”
“What did she do this time?”
“Forgot the buns in the oven. And then she’ll forget she’s said something and say it again. She’s still all there, though, apart from that.”
I sat down on the sofa.
“It’s nice of you to go and see her,” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
“How are you getting on, anyway?”
She looked at me exasperatedly. It was something I asked her a lot, apparently.
“Fine!” she said, giving me a stare before looking away.
“Good,” I said. “Anything on your mind?”
She shook her head with a smile.
“Were the plums ripe?” I said.
“Mm,” she said.
“The yellow ones?”
“Mm.”
“They’re the best plums in the world,” I said. “A really old strain, did you know that?”
“So you’ve said.”
I stood up.
“Egil’s here,” I said. “Thought I’d hear how you were getting on, that’s all.”
“I’m getting on fine.”
“Great, then!” I said. “Fish for dinner. OK?”
“Sure,” she said.
When I went into the study again, Tove was sitting in my chair and Egil was as before, now with a cigarette in his hand. He was using one of our old coffee cups for an ashtray. I put the ashtray down next to it, took the spindleback chair from in front of the desk and sat down.
Tove was telling one of her stories. Her face was lit up from inside, her hazel eyes gleaming, and she laughed as she spoke.
Egil was looking at her, smiling.
I took a slurp of my whisky and ran my eyes over the books on the shelves. She was telling him about a dinner party she’d been to with some artists, how everything had gone quiet at the table when a detractor of a prominent figure among them had suddenly turned up. The only thing the host could do was find him a chair. When he sat down, opposite the prominent artist, the chair had collapsed and he’d fallen on his behind.
Tove mimicked the prominent artist.
“Beware the spells I cast,” she said, deepening her voice.
She laughed until her eyes watered.
“Can I cadge a smoke?” I said, looking at Egil.
“Of course,” he said, and shoved the packet across the little coffee table.
Tove was still laughing.
Egil chuckled too.
I lit a cigarette, my first in six years, and inhaled cautiously.
Tove did her best to settle, breathing deeply in and out a couple of times, only then to burst out laughing again. She was in hysterics.
Egil glanced at me rather uneasily.
Tove got up and left the room. We heard her laughing as she went through the corridor, the door of the bathroom shutting, her laughter continuing, muffled then, though still clearly audible, great waves of laughter, with pauses in between.
“She’s in a good mood,” I said.
Egil said nothing, but smiled tentatively.
After a bit, Tove came back in and sat down. She started laughing again, hiccuping uncontrollably.
I poured some more whisky into my glass. She pulled herself together, but only a few seconds later she was at it again.
“Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!”
She stood up.
“I think I’d better go,” she said between hiccups. “See you, Egil. Ha ha ha ha!”
This time she went outside, I supposed to the annex.
“I should probably get going,” said Egil.
“No, you shouldn’t,” I said. “Here, have some more.”
I lifted the bottle toward him.
“Just the one, then,” he said.
“That’s the spirit!” I said, and poured him another. “It’s rather a good one, this.”
“Good?” he said. �
�It’s heavenly.”
* * *
—
Egil lived on his own a few kilometers away in what had originally been a holiday home. He’d been born into a shipping family and had grown up in the UK, but then his parents had divorced and he’d come back to live with his mother in Norway, where he’d attended gymnasium school. He’d got into the film school in Copenhagen but ended up dropping out—he liked the idea of adventure, was loaded with money, but completely lacking in drive; that was how I tended to think of him. He’d lived abroad for a few years after that, and then, returning to southern Norway at the age of thirty, he’d set up his own production company and started making documentaries, most of them relatively obscure—but he could afford that. He was interested in subcultures, and the little esoteric enclaves that formed in all societies. One of his films was about the Brunstad Christian Church, also known as Smith’s Friends, a small Norwegian church community; another was about a supported living arrangement for people with Down’s syndrome; another concerned a group of young men from the radical right. When eventually he tired of it and closed the company down, he’d just spent a year following an extreme death metal band from Bergen, but while he found the material interesting enough he’d never got round to actually making a film out of it. I’d never quite understood why he’d given it up, because the work itself absorbed him and had clearly given meaning to his life. When pressed, he would say that documentarism was a lie. Not because it was always subjective and never true in any objective sense, the way I would have reasoned if it had been something to do with truth—no, his argument was more about being, and thus it was existential in nature, a matter of all events and occurrences not only belonging to their time, but how that was also their most important characteristic. Things manifested themselves, only then to be gone, never to return, and nothing could be repeated or even captured—and if anything was captured, it could only ever be something else.
But so what? I always asked him. So what, if it is something else? Whatever happens happens, regardless of whether it’s captured on film or not. And people have always captured what happens by telling stories or writing about it. In fact, even remembering an event is to capture it.
He didn’t care, he would say then. He wasn’t a philosopher, it wasn’t a theory, it was about how he wanted to live his life. And about what he believed in.
“All those images and films only pollute our lives,” he might say. “We store up events and people to such an extent that the time we live in is forced aside.”
“Well, maybe,” I would say. I didn’t doubt that he meant it, but something told me his real issue was a different one entirely, and much more straightforward: he didn’t believe in anything, and he didn’t love anyone. All his films, with the exception perhaps of the one about the people with Down’s syndrome, were about people who possessed some burning faith, or a faith so different to what others believed in that it compelled them to live in isolation. He was drawn by what he lacked himself.
It was why he’d become interested in theology too, I supposed.
* * *
—
Now he was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, whisky in hand, looking down at the floor. I racked my brain for something to say that might smooth over or normalize Tove’s behavior, though only half-heartedly, the alcohol had begun to spread its warmth inside me, easing my anxiety about her as well as what Egil might be thinking.
If I searched long enough, the clear light of the drink would eventually shine on me.
I wanted that too. Only not on my own, I wanted him to stay here drinking with me.
I thought about saying the weather had cleared up, but then thought it would direct his attention outside and perhaps make him think of something he had to do, meaning that he would then get to his feet and leave.
“I’m lecturing on the epic poem this autumn,” I said instead. “Starting with the Iliad and ending with the Divine Comedy. Then as a sort of spin-off I’m giving an elective on kingdoms of the dead in literature.”
“Oh yes?” said Egil.
“It just occurred to me that book you were looking at, O, Death! Where is thy Sting?, might be interesting in that respect. Perhaps I ought to include it in the reading list. I mean, it depicts the kingdom of the dead just as much as the Draumkvedet does.”
“Sounds interesting,” said Egil.
“Yes, I reckon I might.”
“Where do you stand yourself?” he said.
“On what?”
“Life after death.”
I gave a shrug.
“I don’t think I’ve got much of an opinion, to be honest.”
“But do you or do you not believe there to be life after death?”
It was unlike him to force an issue, and I looked at him quizzically. He was sitting there with a smile on his face. I got the feeling he knew something about me that I didn’t know myself. It was a feeling I often got when talking to Egil.
“No, I don’t believe in life after death.”
“So how come you find it so interesting? What does it represent to you?”
I shrugged again.
“I’m lecturing on a literary form that just happens to give it prominence, that’s all.”
“But you didn’t have to pick it out as a theme. You could have talked about the body, or violence, or the Divine. The Divine has a prominent place too in those epic poems, doesn’t it? In Dante, especially.”
I looked him in the eye and smiled. Clearly, this meant something to him. I leaned forward and picked up the bottle from the table, pouring some more into first his glass then my own before leaning back into my chair, taking a sip and looking at him again as the fiery, smoky taste filled my mouth.
“I don’t believe in the Divine either,” I said. “But I am interested in the relationship between reality and notions of reality.”
“You mean the kingdom of death becomes real if you think it is?”
“Not exactly. But the world and reality aren’t the same thing—the world is the physical reality in which we live, whereas our reality is in addition to everything we know, think and feel about the world. The point being that the two layers are quite impossible to tease apart. The kingdom of the dead was once a part of our reality. But it’s never been a part of the world.”
“Eww,” said Egil. “All that relativism is so tedious.”
“How do you see it, then?”
“Me? I believe in the Divine.”
“You believe in God?”
He nodded.
“Yes.”
“Why?” I said.
“How do you mean?”
“I just don’t understand how a rational human being can believe in God.”
“Have I gone down in your estimation now?” he said.
“No, no, not at all. I’m just surprised, that’s all.”
Outside, the sun glittered in the puddles. The gravel had already taken on a lighter hue, I noticed, the warmth releasing the moisture and lifting it invisibly into the air. The leaves on the trees across the road fluttered in the breeze.
“Smith’s Friends believe that Jesus was born a man,” said Egil. “Meaning he was born with a will contrary to God’s own. But he chose to follow God’s will in everything he did, and eventually, in that way, he became a part of God’s nature.”
“Do you believe that?” I said.
“I believe that the Divine is something we can be near to or remote from, and that a good life is a life that seeks to be as near to the Divine as possible.”
“What does that mean?”
“In India there are people who can’t drink water unless they filter it first, because they don’t want to take life,” he said. “The microorganisms contained in the water.”
“Is that a good life?”
“Acknowledging that all life i
s sacrosanct is a start.”
“And from there you become divine?”
“Jesus did.”
“You don’t believe that, surely!”
At the same moment, the front door opened, followed by a bustle of feet in the hall.
The door of the study was flung open and Asle and Heming came bursting in.
“Dad, one of the kittens has gone!” said Asle.
“We can’t find it,” said Heming. “We’ve looked everywhere.”
“Perhaps the door was left open and it got out,” I said. “When did you see it last?”
“Yesterday. But we’ve looked outside as well.”
“A fox might have got it, or a bird of prey,” I said. “It happens sometimes.”
“But it might be lost,” said Heming. “Can’t you help us look?”
“We’ve got visitors,” I said. “I’m sure you can look on your own.”
“Please, Dad,” said Asle.
“I’ll come,” said Egil. “We’ll form a search party. I’m sure we’ll find it. A kitten never ventures far from its mother.”
“All right, then,” I said with a sigh. The alcohol had made me light-headed, but my body felt heavy, and when I bent down to put my shoes on I lost my balance and fell against the wall, which fortunately I was right next to, preventing me from ending in a heap on the floor.
“Whoops-a-daisy!” I said.
The boys stood watching me as I tied my laces. Egil, in his boots, opened the door and went out into the garden. The sun was shining from a clear sky now. A steady breeze from the sea swayed the branches of the trees.
“Right,” I said. “If you two look inside, Egil and I can search the garden. OK?”
“It’s not inside,” Asle said.
“We’ve already looked everywhere inside.”
“OK,” I said. “We’ll all look together, then.”
“Pss, pss, pss!” the boys said as they walked between us over the lawn. “Kitty, kitty, kitty!”
Egil lifted the shrubs and peered underneath, and likewise among the flower beds we passed. I almost believed we were going to find it, curled up and frightened to death.
The Morning Star Page 4