Armand V

by Dag Solstad

  * * *

  59. Even for him, the diplomat, it was difficult to understand what had happened. This was a radical transformation that might be exciting, at least it ought to be, for our Armand, but it was mostly frightening.

  * * *

  60. For many reasons Armand could not, even for himself, effect a consistent criticism of America and America’s behavior in the world. Not even in his own mind. But he knew this, and he didn’t hesitate to make it known that he knew, in his own mind.

  * * *

  61. Now and then, such as right here, it’s possible to have an odd feeling, almost like déjà vu, that you’re on some forgotten trip. As this is being written, did Armand find himself on a street in Prague? Something tells us that it might seem that way. Is it Josefov, formerly the Jewish quarter in Prague, this refers to, with all its narrow confines, the sudden curving of the street pattern, and the big restaurant whose door opens right off the street, after the roadway has straightened out again?

  * * *

  62. Scratched on. Some obscure scratching, as if on the fetal membrane. Signs that cannot be deciphered, but are there. The night shows that they are there, when the factories of dreams whir and drone. The dream pipes steam, the products are unclear, but true, and much in demand by the person who awakes afterward, completely out of it.

  * * *

  63. The state prison in Ohio. A murderer is going to be executed. A last request. A cigarette. Denied.

  63B. There’s probably no reason to feel sympathy for this murderer. Yet when you ask, nevertheless, if he has a last request, and he wants a cigarette, surely he could have had one, since you did ask him if he had a last request, just before he’s going to be executed.

  * * *

  64. The vision of a Universe without life. Endless, silent — like a beautiful thought. God’s thought, in contrast to the History of the World. In contrast, of course, to the globe on which we live, where God, according to our religion, sent his Son, his only child, to be crucified, to save us, as atonement for our sins. Where is Armand now? He’s nowhere in sight. Not even here in the footnotes of his life.

  * * *

  65. All these footnotes seem to be suffering from one thing or another. The footnotes are suffering. The unwritten novel appears as heaven. In reality, there’s no heaven, and the footnotes are not its hell. But the footnotes are suffering.

  * * *

  66. Armand’s second wife showed up in the early 1980s and became the mother of his son. She was fiddling with a key ring at the front entrance to a big apartment complex on Oslo’s west side when Armand came past. The key ring held a number of keys, probably a dozen in all, and it seemed as though she wasn’t sure which was the correct key for this particular lock. So Armand offered his assistance. She handed him the key ring, and after glancing at the dozen keys, Armand chose one, stuck it in the lock, and turned it. The door opened as he cautiously pushed, and he held it open for her as he handed back the key ring. She thanked him, told him her untranslatable name, and went inside.

  * * *

  67. A man who loves a woman with an untranslatable name can become strongly attached to her. Armand’s second wife showed up around 1980, they were married in 1984, and when Armand was appointed ambassador to Jordan in 1985, she went with him and moved into the residence in the Norwegian embassy as the ambassador’s wife. Their son was conceived there, in the dusty city called Amman on the east bank of the Jordan river, but he was born in Norway because his mother went back there before his birth. At his birth he had a half sister, and later he grew up with another half sister five years younger than him. Armand’s second marriage didn’t last long.

  * * *

  68. Right before the birth of his son, Armand showed up in Oslo in connection with an official visit to his homeland that had been planned well in advance so it would coincide with the big event, and he was present at the birth. However, his duties soon called him back to Amman, and he left Oslo the day after mother and child came home from the maternity clinic, returning to the apartment they had in Oslo.

  * * *

  69. A month after the birth, Armand’s second wife went back to Amman with the child. At the airport they were met by a chauffeur-driven car from the Norwegian embassy; Armand was unable to pick them up in person, but he’d made sure to outfit the car with an official Norwegian flag on both sides of the front, so that they were given a high-class welcome. This was probably not officially sanctioned, but Armand was so looking forward to their arrival that he wanted to make some small gesture, even if against regulations, to welcome the new citizen of the world and his mother. The car took them straight to the Norwegian ambassador’s residence, where the child’s mother was the ambassador’s wife, and that same evening she would preside over a dinner that was to take place there. This became the introduction to the pattern that would characterize their marriage. Armand, who was then stationed in Amman, would later be transferred to Belgrade, and his wife would travel back and forth to these selfsame outposts of the Norwegian foreign ministry with her young son. At the airport (in Amman, later Belgrade), she would be met by an official, chauffeur-driven car, and Armand often was unable to be there, so she would be quickly taken to the ambassador’s residence where she presided over official functions whenever she was at her husband’s side, though when she was back home in Norway, there were no problems of protocol because she was not present. Their son had a nanny, and sometimes Armand’s wife would take trips without her young son, which Armand regarded as her soul’s expression for her restless moods. These trips without her son were often combined with a trip to London or Paris, but when she returned to Amman (or Belgrade), she seemed lighthearted and would immediately resume her role as the ambassador’s wife with the greatest ease. Yet, when Armand was halfway through his assignment as the Norwegian ambassador in Belgrade and was actually looking forward to spending some time at the foreign ministry back home in Oslo, they ended up separating. Of course the novel up there attempts to explain why their marriage failed. But not here. Here it is simply over. No comment. Armand missed her restless traveling, which he still today regards as the movement of a beautiful soul back and forth to him. She returned to Oslo, quickly found herself another husband (a trace of whom can be read in footnote 67), came full circle, got pregnant, and gave birth to a daughter. Since then the relationship between her and Armand has been tolerably good, out of consideration for their son, who throughout his childhood often visited his father, either by vacationing with him in Norway or by spending a certain amount of time at the foreign service stations where his father was the Norwegian envoy. In the past few years Armand hasn’t seen her, since his son moved out and rented a room.

  * * *

  70. In the invisible novel you might imagine — at least I do — that if the lines to which this footnote refers had been dug up and excavated, several sentences would now make an appearance with an entirely different tone, an entirely different sense of drama or despair, even suppressed emotions, different from what is expressed in the plain entry of this footnote, where I now quite simply state that certainly a momentous event occurred in Armand V.’s life, and at a late date, after he’d turned sixty in any case. In the unwritten text a message appears, centrally placed and impossible to ignore, and this footnote is a necessary reminder; the expressions in this footnote, which may occasionally be mistaken for an event, have to be seen as referring to the initial event, the unwritten one, about which we don’t know enough, because in this novel it has been denied, or refused, it has been dug up and excavated.

  * * *

  71. This is cryptic. Much too cryptic. Not unthinkable, but unwritable. So as not to be borne. It cannot stand the light of day.

  * * *

  72. The old widow was approaching eighty. Gradually Armand realized that she was of sound mind, but malicious. Now she was sitting in the kitchen, talking with the other renter, a student, which is also what Armand thought his son had been. Armand sat down at
the kitchen table, picked up his briefcase, opened it, and took out a bundle of banknotes — the monthly rent for his son’s room — which he handed to the old widow, who greedily accepted the money, carefully counting the bills and entering the amount in the son’s rental account book, which Armand handed to the widow so she could sign for the payment.

  After that she continued to admonish the young student, who was her renter, about how to use the kitchen in a home where he had access by virtue of his position as a renter. About keeping it clean. About the virtue of keeping it clean. About the appearance of the dish brush and the hook on the inside of a closed cupboard. About food scraps. About soap. S-O-A-P. Armand sat there spellbound, listening to her. He couldn’t tear himself away. But suddenly the door to his son’s room opened and out stepped his son. He had on his uniform and seemed perfectly at ease.

  * * *

  73. His son was wearing his uniform because he would soon be going back to his camp. He’d been in the military now for eight months, and in that time Armand had seen him only a few times. Now he joined his son in his room.

  “Give me a call the next time you’re in Oslo on leave,” said Armand, “so I can take you out for a nice dinner, that would be pleasant. Do you know when you’ll be back?”

  His son said that he didn’t know, but he would phone when he found out so they could go out to a restaurant together when he came to Oslo; he too thought that would be pleasant. The son sat down on the edge of the bed, while his father took a seat on a straight-backed chair. Armand asked how things were going with his family, and the son told him. After that a short pause ensued while they both searched for what to say next. Suddenly the son said that he really liked being in the military, much better than he’d imagined beforehand. In fact, he liked it so much that he was thinking about staying on after his compulsory military service was over in two or three months.

  “What do you mean?” asked his father.

  “I mean that I’m considering enlisting in a special unit,” replied the son.

  “A special unit?” repeated his father. “Does that mean you’re thinking of signing on as an elite soldier?”

  “Yes,” replied the son as he sat there on the edge of the bed in his room, his back ramrod straight.

  * * *

  74. It was his father’s scorn that decided the matter. If his son hadn’t been subjected to that, it most likely would have remained only a fleeting idea that popped into his head and then disappeared with a slight buzzing sound. Maybe it was already only a distant buzzing when he told his father about it; at any rate it was probably just something he was playing with in his imagination, and it amused him now to say it out loud in Armand’s presence. But when his father reacted with scorn, he decided to make it happen. From then on he could not be deterred. A short time later he signed a contract to become a professional soldier.

  * * *

  75. The son decides to become an elite soldier.

  Why did Armand react with scorn toward his son even though he knew it might have consequences that would be the very opposite of what he wished on his son’s behalf? Because he wasn’t thinking clearly at the moment he began expressing his scorn? He, the diplomat, lost his temper when his own son told him that he was thinking of enlisting to be an elite soldier. Honestly? The professional diplomat behaves undiplomatically toward his own son, and subsequently the son makes a choice that he probably wouldn’t have made if he had not been upset by his father’s undiplomatic reaction. Honestly? Let’s put it this way: Armand chose to lose his temper when his son told him about this unfortunate choice he was thinking of making. He chose to lose his temper and behave as the person he was. The boy’s father. He could have avoided this. He could have controlled himself. But he didn’t. He was who he was. Now his son would have to become who he was going to be. If his son wanted to be a soldier, he would be a soldier. Armand quite openly scorned his own son. If other people had been present, he would have done exactly the same thing. Openly scorned him. Out in the kitchen the old widow and a young student, the other renter, sat at the table. Maybe they heard Armand V. speaking to his son in a loud and agitated voice. The son replied so quietly to everything his father said that they could hardly hear his voice, just the silence after Armand’s loud tirades, a silence that lasted a minute or so, until he started up again, sounding as agitated as before. The old widow looked at the young student. The young student looked with embarrassment at the floor. The old widow caught his eye, and he nodded toward the closed door of the room where the renter, the soldier, was having a visit from his father, the diplomat.

  * * *

  76. There can hardly be any doubt that Armand washed his hands of his son and turned him into a professional soldier. He also knew full well what sort of elite forces his son would be joining. He also knew what sort of assignments were intended for special forces of that kind, outside the country’s borders. That was why he scorned his son. Scorned the very fabric of war, scorned the whole makeup of war. For once the son was given a glimpse of the thoughts stirring behind Armand’s brow, now expressed with such vehemence. The son was very surprised by his father, the ambassador who had never behaved like this toward him before. The scorn couldn’t help but sting, even though it wasn’t personal but directed at the system that we’re all part of, his father as well, in his position as a trusted government official. His father scorned the new warriors as cowardly dogs, and this included of course, and above all, his own son if he should make good on his fatal desire to join this system as an enlisted soldier whose exclusive task was to drown others in blood, as a warning against any attempt to change the structures of this system, to replace the free with the unfree, the just with the unjust, the good with the bad, the holy with the unholy, or the insane.

  * * *

  77. Could it be that he’d hoped his angry outburst would have the desired effect? That his son would bow to his father’s wrath? He may have had a small (but intense) wish for this to happen. But in that case, it was a big gamble. Much too big a gamble. And if he had truly wished for this sort of desired effect: an irresponsibly big gamble.

  * * *

  78. Why, why? Did he realize what he was doing? Yes, he couldn’t deny it. He couldn’t deny it, because that would mean discounting what had happened. The father played a role in his son’s decision to become an elite Norwegian soldier. The father had not prevented this; on the contrary, he had actually given the situation a good shove. Without hesitating, you could say in cold blood, he had deliberately allowed his distress to govern his behavior such that his son couldn’t avoid making the fatal decision, which, until now, he’d simply been toying with in his mind. Of course he was distressed, even unnerved, he thought it was terrible that his son would enlist as an elite soldier, even as he was about to complete what was, from Armand’s point of view, a completely unnecessary compulsory military service; he wasn’t merely pretending to be upset, the scorn he heaped on his son was no pretense, he meant it, deeply and sincerely, and he couldn’t have controlled himself even if he’d wanted to. He took a chance. He allowed his own true state of mind to govern the whole situation, in cold blood.

  * * *

  79. He sacrificed his son. He knew he had sacrificed him. He wasn’t happy about it. He was horrified. At himself. With open eyes he had allowed himself to lose his temper and thereby sacrificed his son. To war. To the most extreme of consequences. To the most secret and extreme of consequences, which cannot be concealed but takes place beyond words and for that reason is concealed. During the time when Armand V. was walking around in Oslo, waiting to be appointed ambassador to London or Paris, his crowning achievement, he sacrificed his son to war. An abyss. He knew why he did it, there was something inescapable about it, he could do nothing else.

  * * *

  80. On his regular monthly visit to the apartment building where his son rented a room from an old widow, whom Armand had discovered, to his surprise, was malicious, he walked
as usual up Kirkeveien from the Majorstua intersection, on the right-hand side, all the way until he came to Suhms Gate, which was part of the route previously mentioned as a detour to his son’s place. The only thing irregular about Armand’s walk this time was that it was happening early in the evening on a Friday, because it was now a month since his son had completed his compulsory military service and had immediately enlisted as a soldier in the elite force that was preparing for operations outside the country’s borders, and Armand hoped that he’d now come to Oslo on leave and might show up at his room at about this time. He walked along Suhms Gate; the summer was waning, as evident in the fact that an early twilight was smoldering right behind, or in the shadow of, the clear air. Suddenly he heard hasty footsteps behind him, and a figure appeared at his side and began keeping pace with him as he walked. It was the young student who rented the other room from the old widow, and he explained that he was now on his way home after a long day at the university. Armand politely asked what he was studying, and then whether he’d seen anything of his son, his fellow lodger. The student had not, but on the other hand they’d never had much to do with each other; for that matter, the other lodger, his son, could have spent days in his room without the other renter, the student, even noticing. Especially if they had different schedules, the student added. By now they’d entered the neighborhood of the building where the old widow had a big apartment, and they were soon standing at the front entrance. Armand was about to ring the doorbell, using the one long signal they had agreed upon, but the young student stopped him, took out a key ring, and let them both in. They went upstairs, and in front of the door to the apartment the young student again took out his key ring to let them in. With a sweep of his arm he invited Armand to enter, but Armand replied, also with a gesture, by pointing to the doorbell and shaking his head at the student’s invitation to cross the threshold. The young student understood then that Armand wanted to ring the bell so the old widow would personally have to let him in, so he nodded, stepped inside the apartment’s hallway, and closed the door behind him. Then Armand rang the bell: one long signal. He waited. Eventually, he heard a rustling in the hallway, and a moment later the old widow opened the door a crack and stood there with her head tilted to one side. She stared at him through the crack in the door, and when she saw that it was Armand V., she opened the door a little more and let him in. She asked how he’d managed to get in the front entrance downstairs. Armand explained, but she made no comment. They went into the kitchen, where Armand opened his briefcase and took out the money and the rental book. She accepted the payment and signed the book, which she then returned to him. Armand put it back in his briefcase, closing it up. The widow put the money in what looked like a pocket of her clothing. Armand stared at the closed door to his son’s room. The widow saw that he was staring at the closed door to his son’s room, but she made no comment. Her malice was founded on bitterness. An inconceivable bitterness. Armand had tried to loosen things up somewhat by employing his diplomatic charm, but he had failed. Now he stood up to leave. His task was completed. But at that moment his son showed up, wearing his elite uniform, straight from the training center of the special battalion somewhere in central Norway. The son could see by his father’s briefcase that he was here to pay the rent, and he was clearly not pleased about it. He’d planned to pay his own rent, he was making a good salary now, he said, and it was totally unnecessary for his father to pay for his room. But his father insisted on continuing to pay for the room. After that the son went back into his room to change into civilian clothes. The old widow now disappeared, retreating to the comfort of her inner sanctum. When the son had changed into civilian clothes, he opened the door to his room and asked if his father wanted to come in for a moment. Armand did so, sitting down on the straight-backed chair, while his son sat on the edge of the bed, dressed in civilian clothes. His father asked if he might invite him out to dinner that evening, but the son said that didn’t suit him. But maybe on Sunday, Sunday afternoon, before he went back to his battalion and the strenuous but interesting training program he was undergoing in order to become an elite soldier. So that was what they agreed. After that the father stayed for a little longer. The son told him more about his initial experiences as an elite soldier. About what his days were like, about the training, about the camaraderie among the soldiers, in short, about his life in general, and once he began describing things, the words practically spilled out of him.