One time, Geir came over to her apartment, we were going out, he walked around the place, shamelessly examining everything in it as if he wanted to tell her he could read her like an open book. I could see how angry it made her, it was a provocation, but I didn’t know what to do, surely a person could have a friend as well as a partner without them wrecking things between them? Geir had grown up with a mother who suffered from anxiety, a woman who had lost her father when she was still a child, and for the rest of her life she clung to those closest to her, she was a master of the art, Geir said, shunning no means to get what she wanted, and making people feel guilty was the least of them. So the fact that I was suddenly less available than before, the fact that I suddenly needed to stay in all the time, was something he interpreted in the context of that same pattern. He had needed to break free, and now he despised everything to do with intimacy, everything that smacked of commitment and bonds. At the same time, he committed to Christina. And Christina was in many ways like me, someone who endured and stuck things out, a person who pleased others, at the same time, like me, being essentially solipsistic or solitary, she could have been the last person on earth and been quite happy with that. I could too. Inside me was this enormous distance from other people, at the same time as I was hugely impressionable and open to influence, and could allow myself to be tied to someone and remain incapable of freeing myself. A friendship never ties, because if it does it ceases to be a friendship. But a relationship ties, because its foundations are deeper, rooted in the emotions, in the very fulcrum of life, and a relationship is in every respect a common bond; if we are not bound to each other, then what we have is not a relationship but a friendship. Whenever I got an engagement somewhere, Linda would say what about me, have you thought about me, left on my own here, what am I supposed to do? Even when there had just been the two of us, I would turn things down and back out of things because she couldn’t be on her own, and when the children came along it became ten times worse, and if I did go away regardless, I would have to carry the responsibility for her being on her own and having to cope with the children without me, I would be one of those men who ran out on his family, the kind who think only about themselves, their jobs and careers. I didn’t want that, and so I would decline and stay at home. Even the shortest absence was a problem, like the two hours I spent playing football every Sunday; when Linda wasn’t feeling good she would be angry at me before I left, it was unfair of me to leave her on her own with the children, I was leaving her with far too much of the burden, she worked her fingers to the bone, she was exhausted, it was touch and go whether she could manage anymore. I told her it was the only thing I did outside the house. I never went out at night, never went to the cinema, never met up with any friends, we were together twenty-four hours a day, and those two hours of football were something I looked forward to all week. But she never did anything on her own, she said, that was a luxury denied to her, to be able to just go out whenever she felt like it. It was a poor argument, I could come back at her and say there was nothing I wanted her to do more than that. Feel free, I would say. You can go away three days a week, if you want. I can look after the kids on my own. It’s no problem. I can do that. To which she might then say it was easier for me to have the kids, that they demanded less of me than of her, that I could just sit there and read the paper while I was on my own with them, whereas if it was her they wouldn’t leave her alone. That’s true, I might say, but that’s no argument. What you’re saying is that even if we have the children an equal amount of time, even if we’re completely democratic about that, your burden is always the heavier because you’re together with them in a different way than I am. But then what do we do? Does that mean they should be with me 70 percent of the time and you 30 percent, so as to even things out? Well, that’s fine with me. I can have the kids 100 percent of the time. I can have them all the time. It’s fine. And you know that. Fine for you, maybe, she might say then, but not for them. And then she could change tack and say I was always playing football on the weekends when the kids weren’t at the nursery, and that we ought to be doing things together. True enough, I would say in response, but I’m back by twelve o’clock, which gives us the rest of the day to do stuff. And anyway, we spent our whole time together, all of us, the entire rest of the week besides, apart from when they were at the nursery, so the two hours I was playing football couldn’t possibly harm. But that was different, she would say, because that was ordinary weekdays full of obligations, over the weekend we had the chance to do something nice together, as a family. If we didn’t, I understood, we weren’t a family. And so it could go on. Sometimes I got so angry I consciously tried to punish her, to make her feel guilty and show her how miserable everything could be if all we had were obligations, but it would only rebound on the kids. Sometimes I went off and played anyway, of what she said, which meant I was a bad husband and father who ignored his responsibilities and left his family in the lurch, and when I got back it was usually to an apartment full of tantrums and chaos, and Linda would imply: look at this, this is what happens when you’re selfish. One such Sunday, after I’d been playing football for two hours in the pouring rain and I got on my bike to cycle back, already in low spirits at the prospect of going home, I was suddenly struck by the liberating realization that Linda wasn’t there. Her mother was with us that weekend. And that fact, the relief I felt at being able to go home to her mother and not to her, was the same as admitting that we had come to the end of the road. No husband should ever dread coming home. I had to get out. I was in shreds, not when I was on my own, but with Linda, and why should my life have to be like that? I could put up with not feeling up to the mark, but this was worse, I was in a terrible state. I was taking care of pretty much everything at home for long periods, at the same time as I was trying to work, something she didn’t have to worry about, and here she was saying things weren’t equal, because her share of the burden was more demanding. But I’ve got a job besides! I could almost yell at her. I’ve got to earn money! She could have had a job too, but because she’d had three children she’d been away from the labor market so long it was almost impossible for her to get back in. This was a sensitive area, and I had to tread carefully. It was true she’d been at home the first six months with Vanja, but the next six months it had been me who had taken over. She’d stayed at home with both Heidi and John, but we had three children by then and she had to concentrate on the little one, meaning there was plenty for me to do too, and as luck would have it I worked from home and was always on hand, and besides, I confined myself to working only five hours a day, which she didn’t have much respect for. I wasn’t a pilot or a surgeon with regular working hours and clear obligations to fulfill, I was a writer who’d been writing the same thing for years without getting anywhere. Her referring to this as career building was an insult to careerists. And the idea that she was being kept out of the labor market, and denied any way into it ever again, kept out by a male society hostile to women, wasn’t exactly true either, because for as long as I’d known her she’d never been anywhere near any labor market. She was a writer and a trained radio documentarist, and the fact that she hadn’t made a documentary since leaving college wasn’t just down to her having stayed at home with the kids, because now they were in the nursery and she still wasn’t making documentaries. Life with the children drained the energy out of her, she couldn’t manage having to work as well, yet we spent equal portions of time looking after the kids, and I somehow did manage to work. Was this a woman trap? Did she spend more time changing diapers or going to the playground than I did? She believed yes, and no matter how much I did, regardless of how far I went to accommodate her, it was never enough. My frustration at the way my life was being dominated, and the shame of that, was enormous, and I couldn’t tell anyone I knew, because they wouldn’t believe that I was in a relationship that didn’t allow me the time to play football two hours a week and where even the minutes I spent sitting on the balcony wi
th a cigarette were something Linda would deny me or use against me in her arguments to the effect that all I ever thought about was myself, since those few minutes of peace were not available to her, she had to be there all the time inside, whereas I could just sneak off on a break whenever I felt like it. That I should yield to that and allow myself to be boxed in by it felt demeaning and was certainly not a matter I would wish to air with anyone. Anyone, that is, apart from Geir. He listened to it all. I assumed Linda knew, and that she maybe even guessed Geir was advising me to get out, since the life he lived was exactly the opposite, elevated above day-to-day obligations, but it wasn’t like that at all, because what he told me, and was constantly reminding me about, was that it was all anxiety talking, not Linda. Anxiety eats people up from the inside, it’s bigger than them, monstrous even, impossible to appease, and it eats away at relationships because the only thing it wants is for everyone to be snuggled up close all the time.
“It’s anxiety, it’s not Linda,” he said. “Linda’s intelligent, capable, talented. She knows the score. My mom was proud of me when I finally broke loose. And she was proud when I went parachuting or went off somewhere and drank myself senseless. Because she could see why. That was a side of her too. But the anxiety was that much greater. She was terrified and did everything she could to make me stay with her. Those were emotions I couldn’t take into consideration, cry as she might. I think it probably had an effect on my empathy. Fortunately, my dad doesn’t suffer from anxiety at all. I don’t even think he knows what it is. I’ve never seen him scared or anxious about anything. But they’re still together. I wasn’t married to my mom, and we didn’t have children, so I could just leave, which was the right thing to do. It’s different for you. You and Linda are married. When Linda’s feeling on top of things you can do what you want. When she isn’t, when the anxiety gets to her, she needs you there. It’s tearing you apart. But you’re still there.”
That was basically what he would say. It helped me see things from the outside, and to see the difference between the roles we occupied and the people we were. She was always Linda, the woman I’d been more in love with than any other, with whom I had three wonderful children, and when she was on a high she never saw a problem in anything, she was generosity personified, of course, get yourself away, my gorgeous footballing man, we’ll be fine, maybe we’ll go over and see Jenny or Bodil, or someone else perhaps, or go for a walk in the park, why don’t you give us a call when you’re finished, we could all go somewhere and do something nice? Or maybe you’d like to do some work? When she was on a high she had no difficulty working either, she would write while the kids were at nursery, and I would read what she wrote, it was as buoyant and exuberant as she was herself, and had the same kind of unfathomable depth, which I no longer tended to see, since it vanished so easily in our everyday routines, but which, whenever I caught sight of it and the person she was, either in something she had written or in herself, when we were together, seemed to come back. But there was no balance between these two aspects, either in her life or in ours, for the frustration I felt with respect to the one grew increasingly in strength, I was living a life of compulsion, and whether it came from inside or out made no difference, it was compulsion all the same, obligation, and that wasn’t how I wanted it, and this not wanting was sooner or later bound to become a not being able. I was approaching that limit, and I supposed I was merely waiting for some factor that would finally give me release. In our arguments I’d already begun to threaten her with leaving. It would mean our sharing everything equally, down the middle, she would have the children 50 percent of the time, I would have them the other 50 percent, and she would have to earn her own money, and I mine. When I said this she would fall apart and beg me not to. Don’t go, please don’t go. And I didn’t because I knew it would destroy her life, how would she ever manage on her own? And then, when the argument was over, there would be hope. Always a promise of change.
Her reacting the way she did to the look Geir gave me on this particular day in August 2009 had to do with all of this. Geir’s look said, I see what you mean, Karl Ove. She’s relating Gunnar’s threats to herself, what am I supposed to do, how am I going to cope, and, by extension, how could you do this to me? In that look, she recognized the way I saw things and felt herself left bare. Geir and I were ganging up on her. It wasn’t like that at all, but she had been left bare, certainly, since I confided in him the way I did. It wasn’t a betrayal because I had to be able to talk to someone outside our relationship, but it felt like a betrayal in the way it had been made visible all of a sudden. Another thing I sensed she was reacting to was that I allowed Geir to influence me to such an extent that his opinions became my opinions, that to a degree he was brainwashing me, and that the distance that had opened up between Linda and me, which was due to my frustration, was a part of that. Geir was whispering in my ear about my life and her role in it, and before long it would make me leave her. I didn’t know if this really was what she was thinking, or whether it was my own paranoia that had led me to such ideas, but there was no way to find out because there was no way we could talk about it other than when our arguments were coming to a head, at such a point she once yelled at me that she couldn’t understand why I didn’t just move in with Geir seeing as how I spent the whole time on the phone with him, words that as soon as the argument was over and we’d made up again, she in tears, I with my anger stuck like a stone in my chest, she said she hadn’t meant. She actually liked Geir. I believed her because now, finally, after seven years, I had begun to understand her. She liked him when she was feeling strong and had the energy in her to be relaxed and casual about things, including her feelings for me, whereas when she was down things looked different to her, because then she was afraid everything was going to be swallowed up and she was going to lose all that she had, and that feeling was so powerful it affected all her opinions, assessments, and perceptions. So there was nothing underived other than anxiety or joy, emotions so powerful inside her that they could turn good into bad and bad into good in the space of a moment. It had torn so much apart that I no longer cared, I’d used up so much energy to accommodate it, regardless of how unreasonable it could appear to me, that all of a sudden I could do so no longer: she could weep and be as despairing as a person could be, and all I could do was look at her and tell her I wasn’t going to say anything until she stopped crying. She could scream at me, and I would say, Are you done yet? That I was no longer tangled up in the emotions, but detached, standing there looking at them, perhaps made her feel even more scared, and the fear she felt was justified, because I was reaching a point where I couldn’t handle it anymore, I felt myself to be at the very limit of what I could endure, so removed from the life I wanted to live that I could hardly think about anything else.
Then the e-mails started coming in, the pressure from outside, and I no longer stood with my back to her and the family, looking out, I swiveled around, quickly, in the space of an hour, and was then standing with my back to the world, facing them, Linda and the children, for the first time in a very long time. She went off to visit Helena, I missed her because I needed her, I needed to feel her warmth. Only then it got torn apart by the look Geir sent me, all that was contained in it, and I despaired, all of a sudden it felt like it was too late, as if somehow the dynamics of destruction carried on without me after I stopped. I had stopped too late, swiveled around too late, and it had taken on its own momentum. This was the feeling I had when I followed Linda into the bedroom that afternoon in August 2009, but there was more, so much more than that: I had put all my frustration into the writing, it had filled an entire novel, it was about us, she and I, and although I suddenly needed her again, suddenly wanted her again, suddenly wanted to live my life there again, my past, my frustration, and my yearning to get away wedged itself in between us, because soon she would have to read that novel, soon it would be published.
* * *
She was at the computer when I
entered the room, staring stiffly at the screen as if in deep concentration, but I recognized that look, it was a sign of the opposite, an inner turmoil she was trying to conceal.
“What’s the matter?” I said, sitting down on the bed.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Why did you come in here, then?”
“To check my e-mail.”
I felt I should get up and put my hand on her shoulder, but I knew she would react as if it were something alien and just leave it there to show me how removed she was from me, and not, as she normally would have done, since such signs of affection had become so infrequent and would always come as a surprise to her, return the gesture.
It pained my heart. I had denied her the only thing she really needed from me.
“Was it that look Geir gave me?” I said.
She glanced at me, then turned her attention back to the screen in front of her.
“No, not at all,” she said. “I didn’t see any look.”
“What is it then?”
She sighed.
“I got such a bad feeling from those e-mails. And I can see how much it’s getting to you. I just started thinking about what the autumn’s going to be like. If it goes to court. There won’t be room for anything else. And there’s you and Geir sitting there, and … well, wallowing in it, in a way.”
“I wouldn’t call it wallowing exactly,” I said.
“You asked what the matter was. That was it. I don’t want to discuss it.”
“OK,” I said, and got to my feet. “Are we friends?”
My Struggle, Book 6 Page 37