by Dag Solstad
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44. He’d thought a lot about Paul Buer after the reception in Madrid, and about the fact that Paul had been weighed down from being a witness to the truth, and to such an extent that he’d lost his social voice, the one we all need in order to be around others. Although it had pained him to see Paul in this state, and although he had some idea, even back then in Madrid, that his condition was caused by some matter that had marked him so strongly that Armand suspected it was about to spell his demise, which in fact did happen a few months later, he never took the step to find out about the specific matter, even though it would have been entirely possible since the documents were in the public record, as well as any counterarguments. He could have formed his own opinion about the matter, but he didn’t. Why not? Maybe because that’s just not something anyone does, and maybe because if Armand had done so, he would have had an unpleasant feeling that he was scrutinizing another man, an old friend, poking around in his papers, and doing so when nobody had asked him to. I think that’s the way it was. Armand can at least say as much with confidence, and there are no more questions to ask.
* * *
45. But if he had eaten dinner with him back then in Madrid (which had proved impossible) and he’d heard Paul talk with great intensity, and much too loudly, as Armand must have figured he would, tirelessly, tirelessly, to the point of annoyance, and Armand had then suggested that Paul should explain the whole matter, what then? It’s an impossible thought because the dinner was impossible, because it could have taken place only under circumstances that were not in place, because Armand couldn’t have foreseen Paul Buer’s demise, and even if he might have had some suspicion, that suspicion wasn’t strong or convincing enough for him to openly act on that suspicion, or fear, to cancel one of the inviolable obligations of his official position, scheduled for that very same evening. But couldn’t he have contacted Paul later? Sent him a letter suggesting that he would look into the matter and eventually offer him, Paul Buer, some advice? Yes, he might have done that. But during the reception at the embassy, Paul hadn’t mentioned even a single word about the matter. So Armand remained clueless.
* * *
46. No one can accuse another person, even when it comes to a best friend, of not taking it upon himself to decide to carry out an independent investigation in a matter that is clearly proving to be a torment. Yet it still nagged at Armand that he hadn’t done so. Even though he was greatly concerned about Paul Buer’s fate, both before and after his tragic demise, it’s a fact that he didn’t have the slightest inkling of the proof that Paul claimed he had in his possession and that was never taken seriously by those who should have taken it seriously. He never investigated the proof that Paul said he had presented, nor did he try to track down the counterarguments to which those in charge resorted when they chose not to take his proof seriously, nor did he try to find out how the alleged suppression of Paul Buer’s true revelations had taken place in practice. He retained his memory of Buer as someone passionate about the truth, his truth, to the extent that it spelled his demise. But he refused to investigate the actual state of things. He had his reasons for this. Because if Armand had looked into this matter that was so vital to Buer, with the intention of verifying it and seeking the truth, what would he have found? That Buer’s proof was without question correct, as Buer himself had believed so steadfastly that he’d even lost his social voice out of sheer horror that no one was willing to listen to his documented proof of the truth? That was not what Armand would have wanted. If this was the truth, then he didn’t want to know about it. The mere idea that Buer’s proof might have needed a more thorough verification kept him from taking a look at those documents. He didn’t want to remember Buer in any other way than he now remembered him. The lost man in Madrid, the man eaten up from the inside by the truth because it wasn’t allowed to be released but was instead forced into a restrictive exile inside of him.
* * *
47. Armand had gone home to attend Paul Buer’s funeral. He came up with an appropriate reason for going to Oslo for consultations with the foreign ministry so that he’d be able to show up for the funeral of his old friend. But when he arrived at the Vestre Gravlund cemetery and slowly walked toward the chapel of the crematorium and caught sight of a group of nicely dressed people, both women and men, clustered outside the chapel, he stopped. He was struck with a great sense of loneliness, because he realized that he shouldn’t be there. He couldn’t make himself continue on toward the group, so he had no choice but to turn around. He walked along the pathways in the cemetery and heard the chapel bells toll at the start of the service for Paul Buer. He wandered around nearby during the whole funeral, and when the chapel bells again tolled, he was standing at the edge of the parking lot, watching the mourners come out of the chapel.
* * *
48. That was a long time ago now. But every once in a while Armand would think about it again. Suddenly it would pop into his mind, and since he made no attempt to push the thought aside, there it was again, and he would replay everything in his mind one more time. He couldn’t simply push it aside, he had decided that was something he couldn’t do, out of consideration for his deceased old friend. It’s a way of showing him respect, thought Armand, and I’ll just have to bear the brunt of it. And one more time he’d think about the matter, about the documents he’d never investigated. Even though it had been virtually impossible for him to suggest to Buer in a natural way — for example via a letter, after the reception in Madrid — that he would take a look at the documentation in order to reach his own opinion, which might have offered some support to his hard-pressed childhood friend, it wasn’t entirely impossible to do this after Buer passed away. Of course you might say that this would no longer have any meaning, but for Armand V. himself it would have meant something to be able to undertake an assessment of whether there was any relevance to Buer’s documentation of chicanery in the matter of the main airport. But he didn’t do anything about it. He refused, and he knew why. Because what if he had indeed gone through the documents and discovered that Buer was right? What would the consequences have been for Armand? Wouldn’t he then have had to speak up? Loudly, so everybody heard? Publicly? Write letters and approach those who were in charge? In short, he would have had to become Buer’s ally in his battle for the truth. While Buer was still alive. Or to become, at the very least, his posthumous ally, after his death, speaking up in a resounding voice. Yes, he would have been obligated to do that, it was something he couldn’t have easily avoided. There was no way to avoid it, except by not investigating what the whole matter was about. Certainly, he didn’t want to appear to be Buer’s ally. His whole being had resisted doing that, and it still did. Again he pictured the way Buer had looked that time in Madrid. He recalled his obstinate voice. It had seemed so unpleasant. He’d found it horrifying. He so wished he could have done something for him, but he could not join his cause. Not even when, or if, Paul had truth on his side. He should have done it, if Buer had been right in pointing out that some chicanery had occurred, a false meteorological measurement, that had crucial importance for the decision-making process, and hence was suppressed, greeted with suspicion; if in fact Paul’s judgment had been smeared, slandered, he’d been met with distortions, half-truths, bureaucratic pretexts, maybe even outright lies. But Armand couldn’t do it. It went against the grain; Buer’s reality was not his. The reality of the wronged individual went against the grain for Armand. He couldn’t share in the situation of the wronged individual, even though that person was right and represented Truth and the order that needed to be restored. Armand was too bound to his own position as a diplomat. He liked the ways of diplomacy, which were as far from Buer’s ways as they could possibly be. There was something about the ease of diplomacy, in associating with others, in conventions and codes, that spoke more strongly to him than he’d so far ever imagined. It was the civilized nature of the diplomatic ways, which also served as its basis and genesis, to
which he now felt so drawn, and which also, when it came right down to it, was Armand’s anchor that he cast into the deep whenever he had to explain his own life. And it resisted the figure of Paul Buer, that person who had recklessly continued on toward his own downfall, with all his sense of injustice, all his fanaticism on behalf of the Truth.
This was what Armand now acknowledged. He would give a great deal not to have come to this acknowledgment. This was the worst possibility. That he hadn’t investigated Buer’s documentation because he’d feared his old friend was right. That he was right and had been opposed by powerful forces that didn’t want Buer’s proof to make it onto the agenda. This is the truth. It was many years ago now since Buer passed away. Yet Armand V., the Norwegian diplomat, still wandered around Oslo, pondering these agonies.
* * *
49. To repeat: Armand was intent on living a noble life. Serve his country? Serve God? Serve society? Without these sorts of questions Armand would not exist, even though he would have answered every one of them with “no.” But Armand exists because these questions exist in his consciousness, even though they should have been answered long ago, in the negative. He called this having a civilized consciousness. His denial does not comprise a denial of the questions. What he means is that it makes little difference whether there’s a light at the end of the tunnel or not. It’s more important to look for an escape hatch, a way out of the whole thing, somewhere or other within the tunnel. But what may astonish an outsider is the elegance and malice with which this man can behave, he who is really only looking for a way out of the whole thing.
49B. What is actually meant by an escape hatch in the tunnel? Think about a tunnel. A mountain tunnel. Where is the escape hatch there? As far as we know, nowhere; if there is a hatch it’s in any case not an escape hatch. Imagine another tunnel. A tunnel underwater. Where is the escape hatch there (the water gushes in, you could call it the deluge, but it’s hardly an escape hatch)? Or are you picturing the road tunnels underground? Then the escape hatch would have to be an exit ramp, clearly marked. A clearly marked road out of the underground passage, in spite of everything. Does that make sense? Hardly. This is what Armand might have been thinking about, sitting on the edge of the bed, as he took off his diplomatic suit after a long day at the office, or after a reception, or after a fairly confidential meeting.
* * *
50. Now that Armand was basically waiting around for his last assignment — the one that would take him to London or Paris, and that he called his Crowning Achievement — he occasionally suffered from sudden dizziness. It might happen at any moment, but especially when he was at the foreign ministry on Victoria Terrace. An acute dizziness which, while it lasted, made him consider going to see a doctor — a thought that he would again brush aside, or at least postpone, as soon as the dizzy spell subsided. He knew what it was. It was sheer anxiety, and he knew why. It had to do with the fact that he was unable to identify with anything related to his job, except for the outward arrangements he was constantly obliged to undertake. He merely put on a good show. He didn’t mean a word he said, nor did he stand wholeheartedly behind anything he did. It was all mimicry. When others were upset, Armand was upset too. When they were proud of what the foreign ministry had managed to accomplish, when it had to do with national security, peace processes around the world, negotiations, influence, etc., etc., and they all enthusiastically exclaimed with genuine esprit de corps, then Armand would also play along, if need be.
* * *
51. At this very moment, on his way home in the car, a random thought occurred to him, or as he described it to himself: something I don’t yet even dare think about. If our time is viewed from the outside, from the viewpoint of the future and not the past, what will they say? About hangers-on like Armand V.? Each time such thoughts appeared, he rejected them without argument. The argumentation came later, when such a thought didn’t merely cross his mind, rather he knew it by heart, though that didn’t mean it was bad or wrong.
* * *
52. Toward the end of his embassy assignments in service to the Norwegian state, Armand V. had to conclude: our lineage has gotten away from this. It’s impossible to look the truth in the eye. This has gone too far. There’s no way back.
* * *
53. Even for him, the diplomat, it was difficult to understand what had happened. It was a radical transformation, which might be exciting, it ought to be, at any rate, for our Armand, but it was mostly frightening.
* * *
54. “You shouldn’t make such a fuss,” said Armand. But the person he was talking to showed no remorse. Not at the time.
* * *
55. The fact that our country’s female defense minister — in the new millennium our country’s defense minister we will be female — embraces the world leader’s chief war representative isn’t anything special from an international perspective. The nomenclature of small countries tends to require that, thought Armand. He laughed. The difference is simply that for the governments of other small countries, this is necessary in order to retain power, meaning to obtain the protection of the world’s leader against your own people. Not so here. He laughed again. The gleeful Norwegian diplomat, who wandered around Oslo, waiting for his appointment to Paris or London, his crowning achievement. (Why not Washington?)
* * *
56. It may be that, no matter what, it wasn’t possible. And this can’t be blamed on Armand V. The cause may lie in the very speed with which the journey proceeds, erasing all hope that the questions that should be asked, are asked. On that evening Armand had a clear sense that he saw everything, all his desires, both in the past and the future, in one vision, which made him double over, as if in pain. All those desires, which we pay for with our peace of mind: vanity, the desire to be seen. There. Up there. But “up there,” from the plan’s point of view, is not up there in the novel, fate’s point of view, but it can be described only here. Here. Down here. This vision came to Armand right after he had yet again visited his son and was on his way home. They’d had a long conversation in which he, the father, had taken a peremptory tone. In addition to pain, he also felt a strong urge to radically transform what he had seen, give it a shake, turn it upside down, if for no other reason than to express his mute protest. But Armand belongs here. In the world of symbols. From the point of view of speed. Together with all the others parading, intoxicated with vanity, around what is invisible (power). People clothe themselves in importance, as representatives, as highly visible, even behind closed doors. The Visible: themselves, glitzy, flashy, in the spotlight, under the glitter of the myriad crystals in the chandelier. Media people, TV stars, ambassadors, ministers, all of them operating with the intoxication of vanity, in a circle around the Void, the invisibility of power, and they want to be seen that way, or seen as they enter the inner sanctum, knowing that the doors will be closed solemnly behind them, that’s where they go to catch a glimpse of the Void, the Invisible (power) — that which moves, that which has consequences, that which is immovable.
* * *
57. Perhaps what I mean is Armand’s hopelessness. Armand’s fundamental lack of hope. What does Armand have instead of hope? Don’t know. But: no sense of destiny, a lack of purpose, the fact that Armand has no plan, no Armand-plan that makes a novel about him readable, or writable, are descriptions that immediately come to mind, unbidden, when Armand’s fundamental lack of hope, his hopelessness, presents itself. Regardless of whether he serves his country or not; and that is what he does, of course, whether he wants to or not, and on its terms, not his own. Watch out that you don’t lose your inner cheerfulness, which is your soul. All your achievements.
* * *
58. The fact that Norway can get bigger by joining the EU is, for many who are part of his milieu and his profession, a fascinating, even glitzy idea. It’s the only thing that can get us into the History of the World. Outside of it, we are, and will continue to be, a province, as we’ve always been. For
the most part a colony to a third-rate, possibly fourth-rate power (Denmark). The dream of Norway as a major power goes through the EU. This was something the diplomat Armand V. knew. And he shrugged.
This megalomania among the country’s leading forces was not becoming to the nation. Rather, it was destructive. The case of Greenland in the late 1920s now had a follow-up. Norwegian megalomania is not pretty (even though relatively speaking it’s utterly harmless, bearing in mind the Greenland case, and the Olympics in Lillehammer).