Novel 11, Book 18

by Dag Solstad

  On Sundays Bjørn Hansen dined at the Grand Hotel, when he was not at the Busks’. When he came home he noticed that his son had fried a chop or sausages and he thought, I could have invited him to the Grand with me. Originally he had intended to invite Peter to join Herman Busk and himself on their Sunday walks, then they could go to the Grand afterwards, or to Herman Busk’s place. But Herman Busk had already invited him: he had met Peter one day in Bjørn Hansen’s flat. Then he had said that Peter was very welcome as a Sunday dinner guest, along with his father. But Peter had said that it did not suit him. He could not afford to use his Sundays for such things, he was sorry to say. A straight enough answer, in a way – a young man with an appetite for life can surely imagine better ways to spend his Sundays than to have dinner with his ageing father and his ageing friend and his wife. But there was something in Peter’s tone that Bjørn Hansen disliked. It was so boastful. And completely devoid of the least understanding that it was his father’s friend who had invited him, to show that the hospitality he gladly showed towards Bjørn Hansen would now be extended to him as well. Therefore Bjørn Hansen felt Peter’s brusque declaration that he had other uses for his Sundays as a rejection not so much of Herman Busk as of himself, and in the very presence of Herman Busk, his friend, who thus had to witness how Bjørn Hansen’s son refused to assume any filial obligation, despite occupying a room in his father’s house.

  It had sounded so unnecessary. Why could he not have given his father that pleasure? To be allowed to take along his own son to Sunday dinner at Berit and Herman Busk’s house, if only once. Or he could have shown himself interested, in principle, thanked Herman Busk politely, and said he would be glad to. He didn’t have to go, after all. He could have found an excuse when the time came. This episode gave Bjørn Hansen a grudge against Peter. ‘He hangs on for dear life,’ he again couldn’t help thinking, without realising in what way precisely this episode had been indicative of it. So when he perceived the smell of chops in the flat when he returned home after his dinner at the Grand, he would think, It serves him right. One day he had an errand at home before dining at the Grand. When he entered the flat, Peter was frying sausages. Sunday afternoon. He was dressed in modern leisurewear, light, loose, thin clothes, the sort young people wear when they are about to have some wholesome fun in their free time, in field and forest. He stood there in these clothes frying sausages. I won’t invite him to come along, no, I won’t, he can stand there with his sausage scraps. He exchanged a few words with his son and said he was going out. He was wearing his old-fashioned anorak, but Peter knew that he was off to a restaurant to have a first-class dinner; when Bjørn said he was going out, Peter knew that he was trying to hide the fact that he was going to dine out, obviously to avoid inviting him along, instead letting him stand there over his four wretched, burnt, smoked-meat sausage halves. Afterwards Bjørn felt regret, of course, as he read the menu at the Grand Hotel.

  Because he happened to picture Peter to himself once again. Frying sausages in the kitchen, dressed in his fashionable leisure clothes. Alone. On Sunday. Why doesn’t he find someone to eat out with? he thought. It’s like that every Sunday. The smell of chops hovering in the flat when he came home was a giveaway. And the lone plate in the sink. He’s so much alone, he thought. There wasn’t much that he knew about Peter. He knew him only from what he told him about himself and his doings when he sat down with his father to watch TV in the living room once in a while. Otherwise he saw and heard little of him, in the flat. He came back early every evening of the week. Mostly around six or half-past. If not a little past nine or a little past eleven, a little past nine, a little past eleven, the cinema having just closed; then those couple of hundred metres from Kongsberg’s posh cinema straight home to Bjørn Hansen’s flat. Sometimes Peter would get up from the sofa after watching TV and take a walk. But he never stayed out for long, it was just an evening stroll, or so it appeared.

  Why is he not with the others? thought Bjørn. But he is, he protested to himself. On Saturdays. Then he’s out till late at night. He pictured his son to himself then. Spending a long time in the bathroom before he finally comes out in his slovenly but neatly arranged young man’s clothes. Sauntering past his father, sitting on the sofa, with a nonchalant toss of his head as he leaves for the Student Disco, ready to conquer life in Kongsberg on a Saturday evening in the month of October. Mingling with the others and caught up in a hectic youthfulness, until he lets himself into the flat late at night. But what about Sundays? thought Bjørn. Why is he so alone then? Why doesn’t he have dinner with them then? He pictured his son to himself again. How lonely he appeared standing there. How frostily alone in all his stereotypical youthfulness. Perhaps he cannot afford to eat out with them, he thought. My son is very economical. And so he eats at home, by himself. He must have spent time with them earlier in the day. On a ramble with someone or other, and afterwards, when the others go out to do things in style, returning home, because Peter is the only one who has the opportunity to make dinner at home.

  For he did, after all, have contact with the others, as Bjørn Hansen could infer from the fact that Peter often mentioned several of his fellow students. As a matter of fact, even Bjørn Hansen knew the names of more than one of them. He had noted their names because Peter had talked so much about them. Karsten Larsen who was from Nybergsund. Jan Feltskog from Skien, who had chatted up the Icelandic girl in their class, so now the two of them were sweethearts and sat at the table in the canteen with their fingers intertwined (Peter said, with a laugh). And the Swede Åke Svensson from Arvika. Not least. Bjørn Hansen had the impression that Peter and Åke, the Swede, were together continually during their study hours; in any case that they sat next to each other in class and stood side by side during the demonstrations of technical equipment at Essilov Aspit’s – the country’s greatest producer of optical aids (Peter had related) where much of their practical instruction took place – besides sitting at the same table as Åke in the canteen when Åke had his dinner (and Peter his coffee with perhaps a Danish), a table where also, Bjørn Hansen strongly suspected, Jan Feltskog and his sweetheart sat intertwining their fingers.

  But when I come home today he’ll be there, Bjørn Hansen thought. He always is. Every Sunday. And why does he never tell me who he has been hiking with? He only says he’s been on a hike when I ask him what he’s been doing. Doesn’t Åke Svensson go hiking too? And why in the world can’t they go hiking in Kongsbergmarka together, seeing how well hiking lends itself to discussing things? And they have so much to talk about, or so Bjørn Hansen had understood Peter to imply. But Peter didn’t utter a word about these walks, nor about what Åke or anyone else had said or done. It doesn’t have to mean that he goes hiking by himself, of course, simply because he doesn’t tell me anything about it. It doesn’t have to mean that. But he had begun to suspect that his son spent more time alone than was good for him.

  So he was glad when Peter one day asked if he could borrow his car. A bunch of students at the engineering college were going to a rock concert in Oslo on Friday, and when it turned out that they didn’t have enough cars, Peter had said he could get one. Bjørn Hansen handed over the car keys at once, elated. Not only because it was another indication that his suspicion that Peter merely wandered about by himself, like a weirdo, was completely unfounded, but also because, by asking if he could borrow the car, he acted as a ‘son’ towards him, instead of only seeing him as a benevolent landlord, which he often had a feeling Peter was doing, a situation he simply had to put up with, without being able to do anything about it one way or the other, because it was so difficult for Bjørn to open up after such a long separation from his son. Peter drove away and, with four students crammed into his father’s old jalopy, set off for the rock concert in the capital, a journey of about an hour and a half each way.

  In the morning, Peter handed back the keys over breakfast and Bjørn Hansen asked how the concert had been. ‘Good,’ Peter said. ‘But it bec
ame expensive. Because I filled up the tank, and when we got back to Kongsberg and we were to settle, they refused to pay up. Every one of them. After I had been chauffeuring them all evening, and they had been drinking beer after beer once the concert was over, while I was sitting there with a soft drink. And then they even refused to pay their share.’ – ‘Why?’ Bjørn Hansen asked. Peter shrugged. ‘Don’t know,’ he said, ‘they made a joke of it.’

  So, Peter didn’t know why his friends refused to club together for the petrol. They had made a joke of it. Bjørn Hansen would have given a lot to know in what way they had found it funny, but he could not ask and his son was unwilling to elaborate. But he became outraged. It was a rotten thing to do and quite unusual, or so he assumed. What was there about his son that made it possible for three friends to treat a fourth friend in that way? Were they such good friends that the joke quite simply was a joke, it being understood that next time Karsten would drive and Peter would be a passenger, and then Karsten would pay for petrol and be the chauffeur of the evening, with only a soft drink to console himself with?

  ‘But then I threw them out,’ Peter said, in his usual too loud voice. ‘They damn well had to walk home, and Halvor Mørk had at least four kilometres to walk, but walk he must since he wouldn’t pay. You see, I had stopped at the marketplace just to settle up before taking them home, one after the other. It was in the middle of the night, damn it, four o’clock in the morning, and now they thought that, after acting as their trusty chauffeur, I would take them home, too, without them even paying for the petrol! Well, they crawled out then, hurried towards the taxi stand and took a taxi home – at least Halvor did. What the others did I don’t know, but in any case, the taxi cost more than they would have had to pay me for the petrol.

  Bjørn Hansen felt uncomfortable. He did not like the situation. This was no ordinary joke, this was something quite different. There were three of them against Peter, three fellow students against his son. Why didn’t they want to pay for the petrol, but would rather take a taxi? It was not a matter of money, but something else. But what? Why did they treat his son like that, after Peter had offered to get a car and thereby solve a difficult problem for them, then drive them to and from Oslo, besides having to sit around and wait, so to speak, while his friends took the opportunity to have a night out in the capital, once they happened to be there?

  Don’t overreact, Bjørn Hansen told himself. Take it easy. This is only an unfortunate episode, for which Peter must take most of the blame. They were just four friends going to a rock concert in Oslo together, and Peter offered to drive. Next time it may be Karsten, or the third one, that fellow Halvor Mørk. This was understood, as a presupposition, and therefore the three others thought it was rather clumsy of Peter to start pestering them about payment at four o’clock in the morning – just think, getting out wallets, digging out notes and coins, a great fuss with change, no, drive us home, Peter, we’ll take care of this later, hell, yes! Surely, that was how it must have been: a very pleasant evening that ended rather stupidly because Peter can, in truth, be a bit difficult and clumsy socially, as I have noticed many times, Bjørn Hansen thought. And besides, Peter did not seem crushed, only slightly annoyed. And in the evening he went out, to the Student Pub, and returned late at night, since it was Saturday.

  Although – late at night? For once Bjørn noted the time when he was awoken by Peter letting himself in. 12.35. The following Saturday he woke up in the same way. He heard his son come in and tiptoe through the flat. He looked at the time. Almost 12.30. The Saturday after that he also woke up. He didn’t feel like looking at the clock, but he looked anyway. He shouldn’t have bothered. It was 12.35. That is to say, when he had been out having a good time his son came home at 12.35. It was not especially ‘late at night’. In fact, it’s the earliest a young man can in decency return home after being out having a good time on Saturday night.

  Bjørn Hansen understood. He could no longer deny it. This was the proof. He had a son who nobody wanted to spend time with, no more than was strictly necessary at any rate. His son’s footsteps at 12.35 on Saturday night, so regular that you could set your watch by them, testified to that. And he knows it himself. That was the worst part. Otherwise one could say it didn’t matter. He’s trying to hide it, not least from me, Bjørn Hansen thought. ‘Good Lord!’ he burst out. But Bjørn Hansen now knew. That his son was friendless. Evidently there was nobody who liked him very much.

  Not even Algot, the friend whom Peter had described as his good genius. Who Peter had stuck with through thick and thin in the army. Oh sure, Algot must have let Peter stick with him through thick and thin, and so his son had wanted to study the same as Algot, and in the same school, so he could continue to be allowed to stick with him through thick and thin. Yes, Peter had dreamed about sticking with Algot through thick and thin for his whole life, as Algot Blom’s trusted shop manager. But Algot hadn’t even bothered to inform him that he had changed his mind. And so Peter sucks up to some classmates who are going to a rock concert in Oslo. Tempts them by saying he can provide a car and drive them, as their chauffeur, back and forth, which they allow him most graciously to do, relieving them of any further worries about transport. But when the fellow demands that they pay for it, that’s the limit. 12.35. Always letting himself in at 12.35.

  The worst thing was that his father understood them. The others. There was something about his son that inspired dislike. His voice alone – it was far too loud. He spoke over people’s heads. Bjørn could vividly imagine his son in the Engineering School canteen, with his everlasting Danish and cup of coffee as he enlarged on the fact that he dined at home and thereby saved money, which the others had to listen to as they ate. In all likelihood they had seen him coming, with his cup of coffee and Danish on a plate, hoping that he would sit at another table. It’s just too damn bad, thought Bjørn. All that my son is doing, after all, is following a natural urge to be part of the ordinary social life of young students. And he was perfectly welcome to do so, but preferably not at their table.

  From now on Bjørn Hansen began to feel pain whenever his son spoke with enthusiasm about his own times. It hurt to listen to Peter’s explanations of the hectic rhythm of the times, not least the condescending tone in which he addressed Bjørn Hansen, because Bjørn Hansen knew better. But Peter didn’t know that Bjørn Hansen knew, so he continued as before. He spoke with enthusiasm about his own times, out there. About the volume of the electrified howl in the basement room, an almost sacred sound. About the determination of his cohort of students, the new stalwarts of optometry, who refused to let themselves be trampled on, but would turn the practical application of optics into something quite different from what it is today, as little by little they would begin to operate all over Norway, not to mention the rest of the Nordic countries. It pained Bjørn Hansen’s soul to hear Peter discuss his fellow students with great friendliness, indeed, often with admiration. About living here at Kongsberg, under the neon-lit sign of city, a civilisation, highly technological at that, in the middle of the rockpile that is Norway. About the fact that our times are merciless, casting out those who don’t move with them, and rightly so. Here again Peter Korpi Hansen was thinking about young people who had thoughtlessly thrown themselves into yesterday’s fashionable studies and would find the door slammed in their faces when they went to look for a job afterwards. But with an education from the only school in the Northern countries that trained opticians, one was in the front rank. Peter didn’t make a secret of how smart he was, and how this had led him to enrol in the optometry programme at Kongsberg Engineering College, although he admitted that he had been very close to going to Volda, where he would now be studying media. Yes, that’s what could have happened. Chance often prevails. ‘But not all the time,’ he added furiously. ‘Because as soon as I was directed into optics, I said goodbye to any thought of media studies. I had no doubt about what was the right thing,’ he said, and Bjørn Hansen once more had to hear his
son’s gloating voice fill the living room of his flat, drowning out the TV, which was also on.

  In such instances Bjørn Hansen could not help wondering what would have happened had Peter known that his father knew how things really were with his son. To Bjørn’s surprise it struck him that it would have made no difference. Peter would have said exactly the same thing, in the same tone of voice, still gloating over the same details. This young man, who was superfluous and cast off, was in fact genuinely enthusiastic about precisely his own times and his peers, with whom he cultivated a fellowship, in clothes, music, social tone, and dreams. ‘But you’re so lonely, my son,’ Bjørn Hansen could have said, to which his son would have smiled patronisingly. Lonely. ‘Certainly,’ he would have said. ‘That’s the way of youth. Haven’t you heard our music? The solidarity it creates among us is, after all, based on the fact that it can openly express the damn loneliness which is at the bottom of every modern soul. We can fling it loudly into space, like a resounding howl, and spew it up the wall,’ Bjørn Hansen thought Peter might answer then. ‘In fact, it’s quite natural for a young man to be lonely, Dad,’ he would have added, Bjørn Hansen thought; but he instantly felt a pang, for he had noticed that during the two months his son had lived with him, he had never heard him conclude a sentence addressed to Bjørn Hansen with ‘Dad’.