So Long, Marianne

by Kari Hesthamar

  “I’m leaving for Egypt with this woman tomorrow. There will be no trip to Greece.”

  Marianne feels as if she’s been struck. She overturns the heavy chair behind her and storms out, running as hard as she can up Storting Street and turning left toward the Scala Cinema. Her heart pounding, she comes to a halt in front of the glass showcase advertising films, which shines toward her. In desperation, Marianne stares ahead of her, preparing to smash her face into the pane of glass, but as she tips her head backward a hand stops her. Axel spins her around and takes her by the hand.

  Without a word he leads her across the street and strides to a taxi stand behind the National Theatre, puts her in a car and instructs the driver to take her to 1 Kirke Road at Frogner Place. Axel pays the fare and tells Marianne that he’ll follow later.

  “It’s going to be okay, Marianne!” he says.

  Lasse and his girlfriend exchange glances when Marianne staggers through the door.

  “That guy isn’t worth it,” they say, and wrap her in a blanket on the sofa. They fill a glass with red wine and stroke her back while she relates what’s happened. Marianne talks until she is hollow and falls asleep, exhausted.

  At four o’clock in the morning the doorbell awakens her. Axel is standing on the steps, grinning.

  “We’re going to Greece! It’s you I want to travel with!”

  * * *

  Marianne’s parents thought going to Greece with Axel was an appalling idea and did their best to talk her out of it. Yes, Axel was charming and intelligent, but more than that they were not willing to credit him. The young writer was a very bad risk. They weren’t even married, and what were Marianne’s parents supposed to tell the neighbours — that she’d run away? Marianne felt that it was now or never: if she didn’t board the ship it would sail without her.

  She had made up her mind. Some weeks later she and Axel had saved enough money to make their way through Europe to Athens. They could pack their bags, ready to leave Oslo behind.

  Chapter 2

  * * *

  AWAY FROM NORWAY

  * * *

  It’s a Wednesday evening in mid-November. Professor Dahl’s Street lies in near darkness, weakly illuminated by a solitary lamppost and yellow light from the neighbours’ windows. Father sits in the green chair by the radio when Marianne goes out the door, suitcase in hand. He doesn’t quite believe it when she says she’s leaving. Mother has just gone to a meeting. Her last sentence before the lock clicked behind her was, “If you need anything, you know where I am.” No hug, nothing.

  Marianne is miserable. There is nothing she desires more than to go away with Axel, but it’s hard for her to leave against her parents’ wishes. It’s occurred to her that her father will give up playing bridge to avoid being asked about Marianne and having to say that his daughter has done a runner out of the country. She has lain awake thinking about the shame she is bringing them. And how will her brother Nils — now alone with their parents — fare after her departure?

  Axel’s entire family — relatives of all ages — have trooped into Central Station to say goodbye. They kiss and embrace and wave from the platform. Marianne is alone but as she’s about to board the night train she sees a familiar face. Her father is standing by one of the station’s handsome old columns. He has hopped on the streetcar to reach her before the train departs. Marianne runs to him and throws her arms around his neck. Father asks where Mother is and says he wonders why she isn’t at the station to send off her daughter. Marianne doesn’t know. Father looks at her and says that she ought to have given him a hug before she left. Marianne is glad that he asks about her mother, something he never does. Now she thinks that after she’s gone life may be easier for her parents, without her to worry about.

  Axel sits in the train compartment and waits. They’re bringing no more than they can carry. Some clothing. Axel’s typewriter and a supply of food for the soul: Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Henry Miller. Snorre, Bjørneboe and Ibsen. Jung and Nietzsche. Marianne is wearing a fur coat inherited from her grandmother. Unable to stop the tears after parting from her father, she sniffles her way to Germany. Setting out on the path to personal freedom is no walk in the park.

  During an interview the previous day Axel said that he viewed travel as an internal process. He didn’t believe in writers who live in pleasant suburbia and write pulp fiction about Oslo’s sordid backstreets. No, a writer must launch himself out into the greatest depths and not simply allow written words to substitute for living himself.

  Together with Marianne he bids farewell to the motherland. They plan to be away for one year. With luck, he’ll have a new book ready when he returns home.

  * * *

  In Hamburg they took lodgings in an old attic room with a slanting floor, sleeping under a big warm duvet on the beautiful bed. They spent a few days there looking for a car. When Axel bought a secondhand blue Volkswagen Beetle, they headed south again. Marianne had dried her tears and found some peace of mind. Piling their earthly belongings into the car, they drove through shifting landscapes and slept in the Volkswagen or in cheap accommodations along the way. It was uncomfortable and romantic.

  Axel had introduced Marianne to the dream interpretations of Carl Gustav Jung and was engrossed with the analytical psychology of the Swiss professor and with the relation between the individual’s conscious and unconscious energy. He got the notion of stopping in on Jung on the way to Greece. They drove into Zurich, strode into the legendary C.G. Jung Institute and — willing to give anything a shot — asked if they could meet with Doctor Jung. They were granted ten minutes with Jolande Jacobi, who ran the centre together with Jung. They were informed that, regrettably, it was impossible to meet the great man without an appointment.

  They carried onward to a cold and rainy Venice and from there south to Rome. Marianne called the trip their “honeymoon,” and Axel bought her an orange shirt-dress with a tie-belt and buttons up the chest.

  From Italy they went to Yugoslavia. Stopping in Skopje, in Macedonia, they beheld the half-finished square brick houses around them. Marianne had the impression that they had driven onto the stage of an old film in which she and Axel had accidently been given the lead roles. She was struck by the contrast between the poverty there and the comfort of the Norwegian life they had both come from.

  The streets were decorated with photographs of President Tito, whose face — dangling in long garlands — gazed down at them. Food was scarce. Marianne and Axel went into a newly built supermarket with a ceiling supported by tall, majestic pillars, at the feet of which were old-fashioned spittoons. Sparsely stocked shelves stretched toward them. There were just some biscuits and bread to be had.

  During the last stretch from Yugoslavia into Greece, neither of them was aware how dangerous it was to drive with summer tires over those wild mountains. They twisted and turned their way down the foggy mountainsides. All of a sudden, the little blue Beetle spun around 180 degrees on the thin layer of ice, slamming into one of the boulders that served as a crash barrier. The car came to a stop with its nose facing the precipice. Fear hammered in their temples. Axel sat with his hands on the steering wheel and glared furiously down the misty valley. They cautiously opened the doors. No sooner had their feet touched the ground than it slid out from under them and they both lay floundering on the icy road.

  With considerable effort they manoeuvred back into position on the road. Returning the way they had come was impossible so they were forced to proceed downward. Night had fallen by the time they had navigated their way down the steep mountain and found themselves in the Greek countryside. No street lights, just Marianne and Axel alone on the country road, rattling along in their blue Volkswagen with its yellow headlights, like a small insect creeping slowly forward. A few Spartan houses rested in the night, reminding them that there was life out there.

  In a godforsaken place near Thessaloniki, Axel stepped hard o
n the gas pedal and the car responded with a cough, rolled slowly along the road — the motor dead — and was swallowed by the night’s silence. From the car Axel and Marianne could see golden light shining from the window of a shepherd’s hut. They walked over to it and carefully knocked on the rough wooden door to the whitewashed stone house. An elderly couple with a half-grown boy received them with open arms and loud voices. They embraced them and gesticulated and said lots of things that Marianne and Axel couldn’t understand.

  It appeared that the old couple and their grandson were staying there to look after the family’s sheep. The little dwelling consisted of one room with an earthen floor, a bed in the corner and a kerosene lamp, which shone in the night’s darkness. The battered wooden table was set for four. Marianne wondered who the fourth plate was for, not yet knowing that it was a Greek custom to put out an extra place setting in case an unexpected guest arrived.

  The old man and woman offered what they had. Marianne and the woman shared the simple bed, lying side by side in their nightgowns on the straw mattress. The three men bedded down on the floor for the few hours that remained before dawn.

  The next day Axel hitchhiked to Thessaloniki, where he managed to get a mechanic to come back with him to look at the car. After thanking the little family that had taken them in so hospitably and waving goodbye, they made it to Thessaloniki by driving with the choke on. After the Beetle was repaired they made their way south over the mountains. They were in high spirits — the car was working like new and they made good progress.

  Just before a left turn, Marianne is stabbed by a sharp pain and lets loose an ear-piecing howl. As she screams, two women — dressed in white and donning headdresses marked with red crosses — materialize in front of the car. Marianne looks in astonishment at the women. Convinced that she’s gone to heaven and is flanked by white angels, she shouts, “I’m dying!” Axel slams on the brakes and leaps out of the car.

  The women are nurses from a nearby hospital, out with a patient in a wheelchair. Realizing that Marianne is in pain, one of them climbs into the car while she fishes a small bottle of smelling salts out of her pocket and inserts it into Marianne’s nostril. The nurse directs Axel around the bend and onward to a large white house. A German-speaking doctor pronounces that Marianne’s appendix is about to burst. He asks if they would like the operation done there or if they would prefer his private hospital in Lamia, the next village. Marianne thinks, Private is much better!, and is carried into the car. After a short ride they come to an old stone house where the shutters swing on their hinges like in a Bela Lugosi horror film.

  Marianne is borne in and placed on an old iron bed. The nurses hang up a sheet so she can’t see beyond her waist during the operation. Standing by her head, three black-clad Greek women pray for her, their torsos rocking while they mutter incomprehensibly. The nurses catch flies with their bare hands, releasing the buzzing insects out the window. Marianne hears low voices through her fog of pain. Seated beside her in the big white room, with its stone floor and peeling paint, Axel — meek and pale — holds her hand. Marianne screeches. Shrieks with all her strength, in German: “Schmertzen Doktor, Schmertzen Doktor!”

  Marianne is to receive local anaesthesia for the emergency procedure. When the nurses come with a lethal-looking syringe that seems big enough for a horse, Axel tumbles off his chair and sinks to the floor. The nurses hoist the limp man to his feet and convey him out of the room. The next thing Marianne remembers is feeling the knife slicing into her abdomen.

  * * *

  Marianne is in the hospital for a week and Axel stays there with her. While Marianne lies in bed with a moist wad of cotton in her mouth and recovers her strength after the operation, Axel has taken out his typewriter and is writing like a madman. Every time he doesn’t like what he’s written, he crumples up the sheet of paper and tosses it in the rubbish bin or on the floor. Marianne hears the familiar sound of fingers pounding on the keyboard and thanks God for this shred of their old life. And she’s alive! Recovering slowly, she begins to look forward to getting on the road again. The nurses marvel at the foreign couple: guests from so far away don’t come every day.

  About twenty-four hours after the operation Marianne drags herself to the toilet for the first time. She takes small steps along the drab corridor to the toilet, which consists of a hole in the floor. On the dingy stone wall small squares of paper are speared by a nail. Marianne takes a paper from the nail and squats down. Looking at the paper, she recognizes Norwegian words and sentences on the grey-white paper. The nurses have neatly smoothed out Axel’s discarded sheets of paper, divided each one into four and hung the bits on the wall. Marianne wipes herself with Axel’s manuscript and, despite her wretched state, can’t help smiling.

  Marianne walks stiffly back to her sickbed. In the room across from hers she can see a woman in her twenties, confined to her bed. She knows that Axel has visited her several times during his writing breaks. Like the young woman in Copenhagen, this Greek woman had also been on her honeymoon when an automobile accident left her paralyzed from the neck down. Marianne thinks about fate ruthlessly dealing its cards and is thankful that she’s made it this far in one piece.

  * * *

  Marianne was worn out after the operation. To perk themselves up, she and Axel bought tickets to an American western at the local cinema. Marianne tottered along, her stomach heavily bandaged. Wearing their fur and duffel coats they settled in at the chilly theatre and opened a bag of roasted sunflower seeds while music filled the room and the film began to glide across the screen. Slowly, the bullet-ridden cowboys, lying heaped on top of one another like so many dead fish, woke up, mounted their horses and rode away, backwards. Axel and Marianne looked at each other in surprise. In the machine room, the projectionist struggled to get the reel the right way round so the audience could watch the film play forward, from the beginning.

  LUXURY IN ATHENS

  In the middle of December they arrived at long last in Athens. Their friends Per and Else Berit had moved there the year before, and Marianne and Axel collapsed, just about exhausted, in their luxury apartment in Patriarch Ioakim Street. The elevator carried Marianne and Axel directly from the garage to the living room, and for a couple of weeks they enjoyed the longed-for comforts of civilization. Per and Else Berit were delighted to have guests.It was decided that Marianne and Axel would stay over until the new year. The four friends celebrated Christmas Eve in Athens with pork ribs, sauerkraut and all the trimmings — Christmas food sent from Oslo.

  In Athens they received a letter, poste restante, from Henrik Groth, Axel’s publisher in Oslo. Groth thanked Axel for his letter and wrote that Marianne’s appendix had for quite a while preoccupied them more than Eisenhower’s stroke: “We didn’t even know if Marianne had been handed over to a Macedonian horse castrator or an Albanian sausage-maker (sorry!). Until we knew more it was frightfully unpleasant.”13

  Axel wanted to rent a house so he could get down to work on the new book that crowded his head. Per and Else Berit had heard that the island of Hydra, just three hours from Athens, was an inexpensive and interesting place to settle down. But first Marianne and Axel wanted to see Delphi. Heading for Apollo’s realm, they bumped along muddy roads to get nearer to the old gods and perhaps hear the oracle itself.

  According to Greek mythology, Zeus dispatched an eagle from points furthest east and furthest west and the place where the birds met was Delphi. In this way spectacular Delphi became the navel of the world. Apollo, the god of Delphi, was a great singer and lyre-player and he led the nine muses who inspired the arts. The oracle of Delphi was unfailingly correct, and men — but no women — flocked to the site with their personal questions.14 Of those who consulted the oracle, the most famous was King Oedipus, who would come to murder his father and marry his own mother. Axel was fascinated by this myth.

  A few days after leaving Athens they parked the blue Beetle at th
e centre of the world. They got out of the car on the high plateau and looked out over the enormous amphitheatre and the deep valley that was its breathtaking backdrop. There were no signs and no one to collect entry tickets to the historic site. Axel searched for the famous oracle, which turned out to be a rock rather than the hole or fissure in the ground that Marianne had expected. It was her first experience of an ancient Greek theatre. She descended the steps and stood at the bottom, looking up at Axel, at the top, and whispered, “I love you.” The sound carried all the way up to him. During a performance, one could hear a pin land on the stage.

  Axel fetched his toilet bag from the car and shaved his head. He bayed at the moon like a wolf before meditating and praying to the gods. Marianne regarded him while he sat in the lotus position in a crevice in the side of the mountain, a thin young man in a duffel coat, completely bald. She took out the camera and photographed her peculiar, impulsive lover as he sat there with a smile on his lips.

  It was January and the temperature was sinking. The car was uncomfortable as a place to spend the nights. They grew cold when they slept, and making love among the suitcases and seatbacks was awkward.

  They headed southward to the Peloponnese and wound up in the dusty little town of Ermioni, where they lodged with an old lady who rented out rooms. From there they could almost see Hydra, a little further north in the Aegean Sea. The woman let them park the Volkswagen in her overgrown garden, while Marianne and Axel scooped up their luggage, typewriter and books and took the first boat.