Armand V

by Dag Solstad

  It was not until afterward that the twin sister gave Armand a tour of the house, one room after the other. It was Maundy Thursday. It was two weeks since the twin sister had suggested that Armand come to visit her over Easter because she would be alone in the big house in the little coastal town in Vestland, and he had taken the train and ferry, traveling for almost twenty-four hours to reach her. For four days he had waited for her in lodgings she’d recommended, and now he’d finally reached the sisters’ house and was alone with the twin sister in the home where she’d grown up. Here he stayed for the rest of Easter vacation. On the day after Easter he went back to Oslo, while the twin sister remained to wait for her family’s return from their postponed vacation in Italy so she could spend a few days with them. Then she and N would return to their studies in Oslo.

  Now Armand was with the twin sister. Armand’s attention had previously been drawn to N before her twin sister appeared and issued her surprising invitation. He’d had a close, budding, and even consummated relationship with N. That’s why it was so surprising that he found himself in her childhood home in that remote Vestland town together with her twin sister, without N knowing; nor would she ever find out. The days he’d spent with the twin sister had been unforgettable. The twin sister appeared to him in all her sweetness. She loved to display her charms, preferably with a large mirror behind her. N, as the person he thought he knew, was more discreet and reserved when it came to displaying her beauty, the beauty that was hers from birth. Over this Easter holiday Armand had experienced a fairy tale. The twin sister appeared like a princess to Armand in this elegant Vestland house, in her private chambers. His desire was immeasurable, doubtless stimulated by all the surrounding riches, as they slept together in her narrow, young girl’s bed. He was quite giddy when he left the little town looking out over the Atlantic on the day after Easter in order to start back on the long journey to Oslo and his studies.

  A week later N and her twin sister also showed up in the city. The usual groupings resumed at the table where Armand, the twin sisters, and their friends usually sat. What had seemed, before Easter, to be the introductory phase of a love affair between N and Armand developed into precisely that. Armand entered into a relationship with N. Was that because her twin sister had seemed so aloof toward him when she returned to Oslo after Easter? Not once did she refer to the wonderful time they’d had over the Easter vacation. She never visited him alone again. But did Armand ever venture to visit her? Did he try, desperately, when several of them were sitting at the table, to cryptically allude to what they’d shared in all secrecy over Easter in the little coastal town in Vestland? No, never. If Armand had become nothing more than thin air for her, she had become the same for him. Armand began a relationship with N. That’s what had to happen. The fact that Armand had begun an affair with N, the twin sister’s twin sister, did not seem to have any effect on her. Strangely enough Armand accepted this; more than that, he found it perfectly natural, and he hardly even considered it at the time. But quite early in his relationship with N, Armand would catch himself searching for what was different in N’s voice, what did not exist there, that tiny something that wasn’t there, but that had been in her twin sister’s voice. The two sisters were almost identical, after all. People who hardly knew them could see no difference, but those who knew them well could see that there was a difference and could tell them apart, without being able to explain or point out what the difference might be; but those who were very close to them, as Armand now was, could say exactly what made N who she was and her twin sister who she was; on the other hand sometimes even Armand mixed them up, as when one of them was standing in a doorway and Armand saw her in silhouette from behind, and for an instant he thought it was N, but then she made a certain movement and he realized it was her twin sister. So it wasn’t merely the differences that had developed in their vocal cords that distinguished the two sisters from each other, but other things as well, even though Armand had a clear idea that the other differences had developed based on the difference in their voices. And based on the sweet, faintly different timbre of the two sisters’ vocal cords, the swell of their breasts appeared as a clear difference, their breathing was different, the way they inhaled, their way of expressing satisfaction or concealed pain as they exhaled, not least of which because their excitement, their passions, and their disappointments were at such different levels. Sometimes, when Armand was lying with N, he would suddenly wish he was lying with her twin sister. But also the opposite, when he lay with N he was glad that it was N he lay with and not her twin sister, because just then he remembered her twin sister, and recalled that her twin sister had never been the way N was now. Had this become Armand’s curse? Was he condemned to compare the two sisters, who were born on the same day, at the same hour? In any event he visited the twin sister again. It could well be that it was after an experience with N that was not of the type first mentioned — meaning that he longed for the twin sister while he lay with N — but of the latter type, meaning he had lain with N and been clearly aware that he, at that moment, was glad to be lying with N, and not with the twin sister, and yet he decided to visit her twin sister again. He visited the twin sister, but was rejected. This repeated itself time after time over the years — not that he was rejected, but that he visited her.

  * * *

  9. Was Armand occupied with living a noble life? Who asks such a question in our day? This young student. He looked forward to living a noble life. Yes! Armand looked forward to living a noble life. Serving his country? Serving God? Serving society? Is there anyone who thinks like that anymore? No, fortunately. But I allowed Armand to have that thought, and more than that: without that kind of a thought Armand does not exist.

  * * *

  10. It’s only logical that Armand’s wedding should also be cele­brated here in the footnotes. A modest wedding. In the unwritten novel I would have called it a typical student wedding, with the happy couple and the bridesmaid and best man gathered at Oslo City Hall. With an explanation for why it wasn’t held in all splendor at a mansion in a little coastal town in Vestland, but rather as a modern student wedding. After the ceremony the newlyweds and their witnesses dined at a nice restaurant. As most people will have guessed, Armand’s bride with the initial N appears in the unwritten novel over there. Way over there. The witnesses were two people who haven’t been named so far, and probably won’t be mentioned again, a friend of Armand’s and a friend of N’s. Not Paul Buer, who by this time had disappeared from Armand’s life. And not N’s twin sister.

  * * *

  11. Decisive years. For Armand’s generation the years between twenty-five and thirty were undoubtedly decisive. It had nothing to do with the political circumstances under which they lived, but with how this generation’s life path was fundamentally constituted. It was during these years that the big transformation occurred. Childhood and youth receded for good, in favor of an unknown future. People stopped defining themselves in relation to what they used to be in their childhood and youth, and defined themselves exclusively in terms of future opportunities evident in their present situation. They made new friends, and if the friendships lasted it was because they all continued on the same path, and the friendship was sealed precisely because they both knew, or in any event sensed, that they would be naturally connected later in life as well, even if later they weren’t necessarily living in the same place. It was now two years since Armand and Paul had sat in the Krølle over beers after seeing a Godard movie at the Gimle. Since then they hadn’t seen each other except for a few brief encounters at the university, in the cafeteria line at Frederikke, or coming out of the university bookstore. They had simply slipped away from each other. They had largely slipped away from each other by the time they met that evening and ended up at the Krølle. It didn’t cause any sorrow, any sense of loss. Not until many years later did Armand find himself missing Paul Buer, and by that time it was too late and didn’t matter much anyway. Each of th
em had gotten involved in new relationships, and the youth they had shared growing up in the same city now seemed so remote that it had to be viewed as lost. That’s why Armand married N at Oslo City Hall in utter solitude, compared to what he’d imagined when he arrived in Oslo six years earlier. The thought that Paul Buer should have been his best man never even crossed his mind.

  * * *

  12. Armand’s love life. He married N, but he kept visiting her twin sister time after time over the years. This is a fact that must be explained. It doesn’t mean that Armand was unfaithful to N, but that he needed her twin sister in order to love N. Armand experienced his wedding as a bold act. After N and he had decided to get married, he was simply looking ahead: toward happiness. Happiness with N.

  * * *

  13. Double love. The woman up above, whom he was married to, and the woman in the footnotes. Armand’s feeling of being locked in a curse persisted until he met the woman who would become his second wife, the mother of his son. The two sisters were almost identical, but operated in two different contexts. As mentioned, he visited the second in order to take possession of the first. Over and over, in his thoughts. N exhibited a high degree of self-control, she did not suffer from false modesty, and her dresses suited her as she moved through her own youthful years. Brightly lit rooms were her specialty. N carried a lamp, her twin sister a flashlight. The twin sister most often wore a gray coat with the collar turned up whenever she went out walking. In the dark she took the flashlight out of her coat pocket to shine on her path as she walked, cautiously but precisely, on the path she never took with Armand, though that was what he longed for. Otherwise they were the same. In the end it turned out that the opposite was also true, that it was the twin sister who carried a lamp, and N who lit the way with a flashlight. But it was the first image that Armand retained, that’s just how it was.

  * * *

  14. Maybe he thought the curse would be lifted when he got married, and when offspring came into the marriage. But that didn’t happen. The twin sister was not N’s bridesmaid because it wouldn’t have looked right when the marriage was formalized at Oslo City Hall, if the photo showed the bridegroom with the two identical women at his side, the bride and her bridesmaid, her sister. Otherwise the twin sister visited them often when they lived in the married-student housing in Sogn. To Armand it seemed to be a dangerous triangle, and he usually found an excuse to avoid it.

  * * *

  15. Decisive years. Suddenly he found himself in a town in southeast Norway, working as a teacher at a district community college. With him was N, who was now his wife. She was also a teacher, but at the local secondary school. They had just moved from Oslo, where both had received their degrees from the university. And now they were starting a new life. They lived in a row house, they made new friends, and they were well liked. But Armand hadn’t been able to settle in. He pictured himself having a research career at the university, so he was waiting to receive a response to his applications. N got pregnant and gave birth to a daughter. But Armand was still restless. He dreamed of moving on, becoming a researcher. And N didn’t want him to settle for the teaching job he had taken. She had big dreams for him. It was the mid-1970s. Then one day a guest lecturer came to town. He knew Armand from before, from when Armand was a student at the university in Blindern. When they met once again, he suggested that Armand should get away from this town in southeast Norway and his job at the community college. He had an idea.

  * * *

  16. Armand and the cigarette. A joy to his soul. The fact that I had Armand light a cigarette gives him a special quality, and it would be artistically irresponsible not to make this plain. In the social stratum where Armand now naturally belongs, few people are smokers. I’ll refrain from any sarcasm about this and make do with pointing out that Armand is different. And he makes no effort to hide this difference; on the contrary. A monogrammed cigarette case made of silver is part of his persona. He places it on the table, and when he so desires, he opens the case with a delighted expression and takes out a slender cigarette, which he lights with the greatest pleasure, using a fancy custom lighter. He holds in his hand the slender cigarette, a little wand that he uses when gesturing.

  In all his elegance, Armand represents a counterweight. The vulgar Smoking Law, which really should have been called the anti-cigarette law, makes it necessary for an author of my type to choose literary protagonists who are capable of setting the tone in my novels. Even if the novel, as in this instance, is unreadable, or unwritable, and thus has to appear only as footnotes to the novel that should or could have been written, it’s important that at least an inkling of a protagonist who is capable of setting the tone breaks through. Such as Armand. The Norwegian ambassador Armand V. A man described as master of the situation. He can decide for himself when he wants a cigarette or doesn’t want one for some plausible or tactful reason. A man who tactfully gives smokers occasion to cultivate their minor vices whenever he is the host, and who expects others to behave equally tactfully toward him when he is the guest.

  I could go on like this forever. But the main point is that the vulgar Smoking Law will lead to an increased focus on the literary significance of cigarettes. I have to consider how little the characters in my novels have been depicted in relation to the cigarette they’re smoking; it has been such a natural thing, both for them and for me, that it hardly needed to be mentioned. But that’s over now. It’s time to revive the cigarette as a stylish accessory. A literary symbol, something of significance. A prop that unites my century, the twentieth century. Not only does the cigarette unite that century, it also asserts a connection, a narrow elegant line, reaching into the new century, like a historical demonstration. Pointing back to the cigarette-smoking movie stars, which personified male elegance on the big screen, and to those mysterious women, those divas, with their cigarette holders. A lifestyle that’s about to disappear, and soon only the novel can save it from extinction.

  Hence this portrait of Armand. Full-length. Posed. As he smokes a cigarette. The hysteria of the age has not set its mark on his facial features, protected as he is by the mysterious bluish smoke that surrounds his partially erased body and rises up into the air, toward the ceiling in the room as he holds the cigarette like a little weapon. When Armand plays host at the Norwegian Embassy, in a prominent city somewhere abroad, he discreetly ensures that those who can’t stand the sight of a cigarette, or the smoke that rises from a lit cigarette won’t have to suffer. He makes sure that a small room is made available to the smokers, a small sitting area or even his own elegant office. In this way he separates those hypochondriacs from those who are mortal. And he makes a point of spending time with each group. But that’s no reason to hide, at least not in these lines, that he prefers to join the mortals, since he too is just that.

  * * *

  17. It was no coincidence that Armand was in the diplomatic corps, although the instigating event was actually a coincidence. He could just as well have taken a job at the university or perhaps in publishing, but he became a diplomat, because once he grew accustomed to thinking of himself as a future diplomat, he couldn’t imagine being anything else. At that point he didn’t know why he’d never thought of it before, and he regarded the two years that had passed since he finished his university degree as wasted (he’d spent that time as a teacher at a district community college). He couldn’t understand it, especially because his educational background seemed custom-made for a future career with the Norwegian foreign service. He had a minor in both German and French, which meant that he spoke three foreign languages fluently (for those slow on the uptake: German, French, and English), and his major was history. Instead of writing his thesis on a topic within Norwegian history, which was the most common for university students, he had chosen instead European history, specifically the geographic areas on both sides of the Rhine river, titling his thesis “Border Conflicts Between France and the German-Speaking States from the Seventeenth Century
to 1950, or from the Thirty Years’ War to the Establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC).” This sounds like a treatise that could have been commissioned by the Norwegian Government anno 1972, yet it might also be suitable as an application for entry into that same government’s foreign service. But the truth was that this thesis was written by someone who opposed the European Economic Community (EEC); he was in fact a staunch EEC opponent who at that time had no dreams of entering the Norwegian foreign service, nor did he wish to become an editor for a publishing company. But when the opportunity arose a couple of years later and he had time to consider the matter, he jumped at the chance.

  He wouldn’t deny — especially to himself, either then or now — that he’d found a real temptation in the comfort and glamour enveloping the diplomatic life. When you find yourself in a situation where you, in all seriousness, can picture yourself as a future diplomat, then the thought of all the conspicuous glory, which would subsequently follow and literally surround you, was irresistible. For this young man, who was twenty-eight at the time, the mere thought of serving in the most fascinating capitals in some of the world’s most popular countries and living not in third-class hotels with only cold-water taps and narrow, nasty, creaking beds, but in small, elegant apartments in the middle of Europe’s hub (as he put it) — which he assumed the Norwegian foreign service would, of course, make available, even for the lowliest of secretaries in the embassy in Paris, and for the most part this turned out to be true — all of this was enough to make him dizzy. It wasn’t even the thought of cities such as Paris, Rome, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City, or countries such as France, Italy, Argentina, and Mexico that stirred a yearning in him; it was the thought that the whole world stood open to him, from Mongolia to Honduras, and he felt enticed by the very idea of being assigned a posting, regardless of where, and the fact that he wouldn’t know in advance where he’d be going; that seemed to him like a truly attractive lottery, which spoke to his heart and soul. In short: Armand V. seized the opportunity. He applied for admittance to the course given by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for aspiring candidates, and was, we almost say “of course,” accepted.