Shyness And Dignity

by Dag Solstad

  Bewildered and jittery, and driven by this unaccustomed rapture he had admittedly felt filling him to the brim, three days later he rang her up and invited her for dinner. They met in Petit, at Majorstua, and from the way she looked at him, addressed him, came forward and smiled at him, he understood that what before had been unthinkable had now become thinkable, and she walked back with him to his apartment in Jacob Aalls gate and stayed the night. Elias Rukla was then thirty-six years of age and could only shake his head at all the happiness which had so suddenly befallen him.

  Now many things happened in a short time. Eva moved with her little daughter into Elias Rukla’s apartment in Jacob Aalls gate, which was not the small three-room apartment, but a larger four-room place he had acquired by exchange in the same neighbourhood, well, street. That had happened even before Johan Corneliussen had set himself up in his new life in New York. A couple of years later they were married, but Eva kept her name, Linde, her maiden name so-called. Master Rukla must be described as a man contented with his lot as he made his way, light of foot, in thin shoes, to his daily task at the Fagerborg school, up Jacob Aalls gate, past the mud puddles of the mild spring thaw in the month of March, around 1978, and later as well, in spite of the fact that Eva Linde never, not with a single word, said that she loved him. He could not understand why she didn’t, but since she moved in with him, into the new apartment he had acquired, and afterwards agreed to marry him, she must have loved him, but for some reason or other could not say she did. Was it because she feared that he would not believe her if she said it? Was it because it would elicit more questions on his part, about things which had happened that she would refuse to talk about, because it was over, finished? He did not know. But she had come to him, and it was she who had taken the initiative to become intimate. In the morning he ate breakfast with his wife, who was radiantly beautiful, and her rather capricious daughter. That was his new life. In the afternoons and evenings they were together, mostly in the apartment, while her daughter was running back and forth. He slept with her at night, in a private room in the apartment on Jacob Aalls gate furnished for that purpose – yes, this is how he would express it, because to say that he slept with her in the bedroom, or in their shared bedroom, covered so little of what he felt about sleeping with Eva Linde that, to himself, he always called their bedroom ‘that private room which has been furnished for my sleeping with her’, and if it sounded pompous, he would still describe it that way to himself, because this was the way it had to be described, although not in front of others, including Eva, whom it might make embarrassed, just as embarrassed as he would find her to be during intercourse now and then, when she gave herself to him but often with her face half turned away, and he could not tell for certain whether it was an expression of her nature or of something completely different, causing him at times to gasp out, I love you I love you. Then she might stroke the back of his head, or his shoulders, while she looked at him, straight into his eyes though without saying anything, but the fact that she stroked him was sufficient then. At that moment she belonged to him. By the way, she would spend much time in this room, the so-called bedroom, as she had her make-up table there. Both there and in the bathroom were little flasks, tubes, bottles, lipstick, boxes, all lined up, and in such numbers as to make Elias Rukla inclined not to believe his own eyes. She had come to him. Gradually he became acquainted with her. She came to him with several albums of photographs. She sat down on the sofa and showed them to him. Photographs from her youth, which she (eagerly) showed him while telling him about them. Snapshots. From Hønefoss. From the lower Setesdal valley. From a village north of Lillehammer. Bardu. An officer’s daughter growing up in Norway in the 1950s. For him, these photo albums became a treasure chest. They became so very dear to him. He felt honoured to have been chosen to sit like this, looking at photographs from her youth while she eagerly related, with the fervour of recognition in her voice, and he could not help but regard living in the state of marriage as a mystery, on the basis of sitting beside her on the sofa looking at snapshots like this and hearing her repeat the rather banal story behind each of them in a veiled voice. The way to her. The completion of their sexual life, which spread out, taking on the form of a shared everyday life. The daily absorption in, the daily occupation with. Rather than being able to say that he knew her, Elias Rukla could say that he found himself in circumstances where he was occupied with her every day, even when he did not see her, and that he assumed, almost as a matter of course, that it was mutual. She had come into his life, and that shaped his consciousness in a deeply satisfying way. There were many things he did not know about her, which she kept to herself, but what he did get to know was a source of enduring happiness to him. He might see a certain kind of chocolate at the tobacconist’s stand and think, Eva likes that one, and another chocolate and think, That one Eva turns up her nose at. He knew that she preferred tea in the evening, and strong, all too strong, coffee in the morning. He knew what she liked to eat and when, and what she did not like to eat. He knew in what way she was unsure of herself, and how she was able to hide it. Simple, commonplace tricks, which he appreciated finding out about, because it attached her to him, with her unreserved consent. And he was confident that she had come to know him the same way. That all the trifles which he himself, on the whole, did not care very much about, such as his preferring potato chips with paprika, not onions, to go with beefsteak, that he disliked showering in the morning and therefore did it in the evening instead etc., etc., that all these things, in themselves insignificant trifles which he could easily have dispensed with if it had not been for the fact that they had simply turned into habits, unshakeable habits, which he nevertheless did not define as a necessary part of his own identity, were, for her, inseparably connected with being Elias Rukla. And she related intimately to them, so that she made him happy buying potato chips with paprika and serving beefsteak without onions, just as he accepted and was delighted with her habits, giving her what he knew she liked; and although she also, on the whole, regarded these things as rather insignificant, nevertheless this was what united them, this was their interlinked life, in joy, this was the way they lived together and thought about one another. Having turned thirty-six before a woman entered his life in earnest, Elias Rukla set immense store by precisely this, not hesitating to designate it as the mystery of matrimony. He enjoyed the opportunity of pondering what to tell her when he came home, which episodes he should tell her about, and he looked forward to seeing her expression when he would tell her just this, because, he thought, This I certainly believe Eva will be glad to hear! Thousands of hours were spent on such considerations, and thousands of hours were spent on automatic explanations, deliberations, reflections, which he wasn’t even aware he was making, but which were as a whole directed at her and determined his steps, totally. In the middle of a conversation, say, with a colleague in the staff room, or in the middle of a class, he would suddenly catch himself thinking, I have to remember to remind Eva that tonight there is a film with Jack Nicholson which will be discussed in the Film Magazine on TV (he had seen a notice in Dagbladet about it), even though there was nothing in the situation, either as regards his colleagues in the staff room or in his teaching, that could reasonably produce associations in this direction; they were just happy thoughts that popped up, as if to bless his life as a married man. Yes, he had got to know her. And she had let him do so unreservedly, also in roles that were not directly connected with their relationship. She let him freely enter her life as mother (of Camilla), as daughter (with her parents), and as friend (with her women friends, who often visited them), and in the role of his own wife when she stood properly by his side as he proudly introduced her to his colleagues. She had come to him, and she stayed with him. Why, he did not know, but she had come to him and stayed with him. She never said she loved him, but when he had asked her whether she would move in with him if he bought the larger apartment in Jacob Aalls gate, she said yes and came, and wh
en two years later he proposed that they should get married, she looked at him, thought it over carefully, gave him a smile and said yes. But she added that she was Eva Linde. And just then Elias Rukla had thought, Yes, she’s Eva Linde, and I will never get to know why she wants to live with me. But her wanting to is enough, actually more than enough; I’m delighted that she wants to, in spite of the fact that I will never know the reason why she wants to, and it is not certain that the reasons are the same as I wish they would be.

  She tried to show him that she appreciated him. Often in a touching way. For example, by spoiling him in the matter of taking care of his clothes. Though she was absolutely not the domestic type, she insisted on ironing his shirts, pressing his trousers, and brushing his jackets. While he sat at his writing table correcting papers, she would stand at the ironing board in the living room, ironing and pressing, very fecklessly, quite helplessly, in fact, humming and singing like a genuine housewife (in reality, she was a part-time secretary and, on the side, still a student). When she was finished, she displayed the pressed trousers with a delighted smile. Or the freshly ironed shirts before she folded them. She brushed his suits – every time he was going to put on a suit, she brushed it beforehand. Indeed, she took care of his clothes as if it were a matter of priceless treasures; he had never asked her to, and she had not needed to do it, but she had taken it on, from the very first day, as a problem that she solved and was very pleased to solve. Could it be that she really would have preferred to be in an entirely different place, but that there she could not possibly be, and since she could not be where she most of all would have liked to be, she preferred to be where she was now, with him, and was that the reason for her silence? Oh, if that was the case, oh, Eva Linde, then, please, stay here. And Elias Rukla got up from his writing table and his pile of papers, walked over to her as she stood by the ironing board and gave her a big hug. Thanks for pressing my trousers. Thanks for ironing my shirts. Thanks for everything you have given me. As time went by, Elias Rukla used extreme caution in regard to expressing his love, for it had turned out that, when he did, she was not able to answer back with the same words, and then Elias knew he ought to refrain from doing so, and although it was very hard for him to hold back, he felt it was the right thing to do. And so, that was how they communicated: she by smiling at him, his newly pressed trousers in her hands, he by getting up from his writing table, going over to her and giving her a big hug.

  That was how they lived. Elias Rukla took great care in dealing with her, in order not to put her in an awkward position. Now and then, when she thought she was unobserved or forgot that he was present, she would gaze absently into vacancy, and in those moments she had a mournful expression on her face, looking unhappy, indeed. But as soon as she became aware that she had fallen into a reverie, and that he was in the room, she changed her expression to the direct opposite, smiling at him and trying to erase the expression she had inadvertently made the mistake of showing him, with the result that Elias was in despair, for he could not understand why she had to hide from him that she had felt unhappy for a moment; even if, deep down, she felt unhappy all the time, she did not have to hide it from him, because he could accept it as the way things were, together with his own powerlessness to help her with it. But in the morning she was not capable of dissembling. Eva Linde never wished to see another day; she did not want to wake up, holding so stubbornly on to her sleep that it appeared odd. It is her nature, Elias Rukla thought, she must have been that way all along, she has always preferred sleep to being awake, that’s why she appears so fragile to her surroundings.

  Actually she was a bit pampered. She had a spoiled air about her, which was inseparably linked to her indescribable beauty and regarded by herself with contempt, and yet she was unable to liberate herself from it, because being spoiled was agreeable to her, insofar as it elicited the desire to wait on her on the part of the person who was nearby when this trait flared up, blazing within her. She was pampered, and it showed continually. But only in brief glimpses. They were not well off. Elias Rukla was a senior master with student and housing loans to pay off, and a senior master’s salary has never been high, and in Norway at that time, towards the end of the 1970s, it was relatively lower than ever. He had to pinch pennies, that was the bitter truth. Eva had to continue to work as a secretary at the Oslo Cinemas, part-time, and the studies she had given up a long time ago were never picked up again, in spite of the fact that this was what she really wanted to do. But she continued to work as a secretary without a murmur, doing so gladly, in fact, since it was her necessary contribution to their joint economy. However, suddenly she would snarl at him. Once it happened when Eva had set her heart on getting a new kitchen and had come home with a number of brochures. Then Elias had said it was out of the question. They simply could not afford it (they had bought a car half a year earlier). Then she snarled, Damn skinflint! at him, sending him a look filled with contempt. Yes, contempt. Undisguised contempt. For two or three seconds Elias Rukla looked into the eyes of an indescribably beautiful woman who harboured a boundless contempt for him, until she abruptly turned, completely around, and said in a gentle voice, I’m sorry, I know we can’t afford it, it was silly of me. And the rest of the evening she was friendliness incarnate, and when they were going to bed she gave him clear signals that, if he wanted to come to her, there was nothing that would please her more, and if he came he could be certain of being well received.

  This troubled Elias Rukla. Not that she looked hatefully at him, but her complaisance afterwards. Why did she not acknowledge her contempt for him, a man who was not equal to providing her with a new kitchen, now that the old one was so worn and old-fashioned? She was entitled to demand it of him, and although he had to tell her they could not afford it, he perfectly understood, even so, that she was entitled to despise him for it. If you marry a woman like Eva Linde, it brings certain obligations, which he had failed to fulfil by having to say no to her extremely commonplace dreams. He could say, of course, that she should have known what she was doing when she married an ordinary senior master with a limited income, and so he was safe when he said that a new kitchen at this point was out of the question, but at the same time he ought to have warned her, telling her that a woman like her could never have her wishes and dreams fulfilled by a rather threadbare secondary school teacher, something that, if he had told her, would have made her burst into unrestrained silvery laughter. She knew what she was doing. But had she for that reason written off her own worth as the woman whom Elias Rukla valued so highly? Precisely by showing her contempt when he had to admit that he could not afford to satisfy an extremely ordinary wish of hers, she showed, indeed accentuated, her value, placing her at the level where Elias Rukla himself thought she should be. So Elias Rukla had no problem accepting her contempt. What he had a problem accepting was her attempt to conceal it by glossing over it afterwards. Her deliberate complaisance afterwards. What brought it on? Why did she not dare maintain her contempt? Because she had signed away all right to it? That was quite obvious, but what did it mean? That she had signed away the right to make demands on him altogether, in her heart? And what, in turn, did that mean? Elias did not know, but he felt profound despair at her false complaisance after such outbursts and, as a matter of fact, found it difficult to respond to her invitation and come to her at night, which was, after all, as she had unequivocally signalled to him, what would please her most of all, and which he, for that very reason, could not refuse but, on the contrary, had to force himself to prepare for, as the great and, on the whole, quite undeserved honour which in that way fell to his lot, and which made it possible to describe Elias Rukla in these years as, if not a contented or happy man, at all events a lucky one.

  Little Camilla, Johan Corneliussen’s daughter, had moved into the newly purchased four-room apartment in Jacob Aalls gate along with Eva Linde. She became Elias Rukla’s stepdaughter. She lived there, together with them, from the age of six to nineteen. One
can safely say that Elias Rukla had never got to know any other person as well as Camilla Corneliussen. He followed her growing up near at hand, as an always-present stepfather. Elias and Eva Linde never had a child together, so Camilla was the only child he would ever watch growing up. About Camilla he could say that she did not need to worry about having secrets from him, at least as far as her nature was concerned, for he knew her inside out. He had seen her express herself freely and uninhibitedly as a child and adolescent and turn, with much hullabaloo, into the young lady she was today. Through her he experienced a child’s fear of not being like everyone else, down to the minutest detail. He understood that this apprehension was even greater than the dread of being locked up in a dark room, which also was great and fundamental. And he came to understand the fear a little child can have that her shoe buckles, which she herself thinks are very pretty, do not look in the least like the buckles other children have on their shoes, that it can be a real torture to a little child’s soul, and for a long time, and this gave him a good deal to think about. How will she be able to develop into an independent person under such conditions? he had often to ask himself during Camilla’s adolescence. And it did not improve matters, quite the contrary, that the little child was at the same time extremely open and trusting with those around her, both with Elias and her mother, and even with those same children she was so afraid of not resembling to a T. What disasters, real and imagined, must this not lead to! And, sure enough, Elias witnessed all of little Camilla’s disasters and breakdowns near at hand. When her mother’s patience was exhausted, Elias stepped in, trying to soothe, encourage and comfort. And when Camilla entered her teens, he had to assume the role of mediator and reconciler between mother and daughter. He had a tendency to side with Camilla, for he thought that Eva Linde sometimes did not quite manage to distinguish between being Camilla’s mother and educator and being her mother and owner. For that matter, it had started right after they got together. Camilla had then been given her own room, which she kept in all the years she lived with them, though its appearance changed quite radically as time went on, and Elias felt that neither of them had the right to go in there unannounced. He was of the opinion that a child was entitled to have its own room and to be left alone there, without fear of being disturbed by grown-ups. Eva did not agree with that, and over the years they had a number of arguments about this, but though Elias was inclined to give in to Eva on other matters concerning Camilla – after all, she was her daughter – he did not do so in this regard. But Camilla often sought his company. He had felt terribly sorry for the little girl when, at six years of age, she came padding after her mother, a teddy bear under her arm, in order to settle in his place. He had a feeling that she had been deprived of something in her life, and that the sense of loss left by what she had been deprived of, a father, was irremediable. And he did not himself want to remedy it, not even if he had been able to. He was Camilla’s stepfather, taking the place of her father, but he could not replace that father, because he was not her father; her father was called Johan Corneliussen and lived in New York. Elias Rukla was her mother’s friend and new husband, and in that capacity he was to take her father’s place with Camilla. He did not for a moment wish to deprive Camilla of the sense of loss left by her father; that he had no right to do. Therefore he was always slightly reserved with her. When she came to him trustingly, wanting him to fulfil all her expectations, he had to take care to maintain a certain distance from her. In the same way, he found himself in a distant relationship with Eva’s parents, the retired colonel and his wife. Their purpose in coming to see the married couple Rukla/Linde was, after all, to have contact with their grandchild, Camilla Corneliussen. In such circumstances Elias Rukla was an intruder, and accordingly kept in the background as far as possible when they visited the colonel and his wife or were visited by them, as, for example, at Christmas, and he had the impression that Eva’s parents looked upon him as a man who, for the time being, was taking care of their daughter, even after they were quietly married, something that, per se, seemed natural to Elias Rukla. But in such circumstances, especially on Christmas Eves with the colonel’s family in Lillehammer, which Elias Rukla did not exactly look forward to, he was always a bit apprehensive that Camilla would come over to him, as she often did at home, and sit on his lap, and when she did, he tried to coax her away as quickly as possible by some diversionary manoeuvre or other, not least because under the Christmas tree there lay a big package from Johan Corneliussen.