by Dag Solstad
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81. On Sunday, Armand met his son for dinner at a restaurant in central Oslo. It was Theatercaféen, across the street from the National Theater. They had agreed to meet at five o’clock, which is the traditional hour for having dinner in Norway, including formal Sunday dinners. Even though the son had to return to the Special Forces training camp right after dinner, he showed up in civilian clothes. They ate a traditional Sunday dinner, with cauliflower soup, steak, and caramel pudding for dessert. They also shared a bottle of good red wine, which was pretty much empty by the time they finished the main course, so Armand asked the waiter for two glasses of a dessert wine that would go well with the pudding. Finally, they had coffee and a glass of liqueur. On Sundays Theatercaféen has a special atmosphere. On weekdays it is a buzzing café, filled with wealthy businessmen and successful people from the film industry and advertising agencies, as well as the occasional diplomat, but on Sunday it becomes a quiet place. On that day the café closes early (10 p.m.), and until that time it’s frequented by people, both male and female, who don’t usually eat out very often but who want to enjoy a Sunday dinner in a restaurant with their family or good friends. The prices are also much reduced for the Sunday menu, which was something that suited Armand, now that he’d invited his gluttonous son to dinner. It’s true, he ate like a horse and Armand asked whether he’d like to order another steak, but his son declined with a smile. After dinner they sat for a short time enjoying their coffee and liqueur as they calmly and quietly conversed. But the son had to leave early, so Armand called for the waiter and asked for the check, which he paid with his credit card. They parted outside Theatercaféen. The son headed back to his room to change into his military uniform, and the father went home to spend Sunday evening thinking about life in general, and about his own life in particular. He felt that, in spite everything, something had happened at this dinner, something that might have to do with small, epic shifts.
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82. About a month later, he went to the widow’s apartment to pay his son’s rent. It was once again a Friday, and he showed up at the same hour as last time. She accepted the money without giving any sign whatsoever that it meant anything to her, it was merely something regrettable but necessary, a ritual that she carried out to the letter with regard to the payment account book, signature and all. Lately he’d become curious about how her private inner sanctum might look, but this was something he never saw. She received him either at the telephone table in the long entry hall or in the kitchen, as she was doing now. He knew that he could have had a look at her other rooms if he’d gone into them, but in spite of his curiosity, he refrained from any tactics which he was certain would lead him to gain access to those rooms, possibly out of sheer indifference, when it came right down to it. (But he did ask his son whether he’d ever been in there, because if he had, he’d like his son to describe what he saw.) He paid the rent, glanced at his watch, and was about to leave. At that moment his son let himself into the apartment and, like a breath of fresh air, came down the long hallway, wearing his new uniform. He greeted his father and invited him to come into his room. There he sat down on the edge of the bed, while his father sat on a straight-backed chair. The father asked how he’d been since the last time they’d seen each other, and the son began telling him, apparently glad to be asked. But while he was talking, the door slowly opened and the other renter, the student, quietly entered, almost indiscernibly closing the door behind him; with a look of agitation, he stood in front of Armand’s son and said: “It’s all over for me.” Then he started to cry. Armand’s uniformed son threw out his hands in bewilderment, then looked at his father. The student muttered: “Sorry” and again opened the door with a vague expression and disappeared, closing the door carefully after him. Armand felt uncomfortable and soon said goodbye to his son, even though his son clearly would have liked him to stay a little longer.
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83. Of course I could have delved into the novel above and written it down. It would have taken a lot of work to lay it out, and in the end it would have been composed just as it was from the very beginning. Can I say that? Then what about the fact that all my novels have turned out differently than I thought they would when I first set out? In other words, a novel comes together little by little, but does that contradict the fact that it has been there all along, from the beginning? Hidden. Slumbering. Buried. No matter how much I repudiate the notion that the novel has been there from the beginning, I can’t escape the possibility, at any rate, that it might be true after all. In fact, the more I contradict myself, the more convinced I am that I’m not contradicting myself, but that writing a novel means not inventing it, but uncovering it.
83B. The original novel is about the Norwegian diplomat Armand V. I don’t intend to write it down, but I’m making use of it in order to write the footnotes. Yet at times I may write about characters in these footnotes who aren’t found anywhere in the original novel; but of course this doesn’t mean that these characters are any less fictional than those in the actual unwritten novel. The twin sister is one such character. She’s the twin sister of N, Armand V.’s first wife, who is mentioned a great deal in the novel and who appears occasionally in these footnotes. Thus the twin sister has a unique place in this text presented here, because she doesn’t belong to the premises for the footnotes, but is seen exclusively in relation to the material that has actually been written down. That makes her rare. Pay attention to her and treat her with as much vigilance as the author has devoted to her. The twin sister.
83C. What is written here is not what happens in the original novel; these are footnotes to what has happened in there. Ongoing but perhaps coincidental, footnotes, which undoubtedly distort the original novel. So it would be most precise to say that these blocks of text, now presented, consist of ongoing but distorted footnotes to an unwritten novel.
83D. A refusal. Why do I refuse to write the novel about Armand V.? Because it wouldn’t work as a novel? How can I know that when I haven’t tried to write it down? One thing is certain, however: wishing to write a novel about the Norwegian diplomat Armand V., I’ve decided the best way to realize this is not by writing a novel about him, but by allowing him instead to appear in an outpouring of footnotes to this novel. The sum of these footnotes, therefore, is the novel about Armand V. Linked to these footnotes are also the author’s comments about what he’s doing, something that is also linked to the sum of these footnotes, which, taken as a whole, constitute the novel about Armand V. I’m now in the process of writing a series of these footnotes, and for the second time. That’s why I call them footnotes about the relationship between the unwritten novel and the footnotes to this novel. Second section.
83E. It all began in Venice. A Somali was outside the Londra Palace hotel. It was late in the evening, and the Somali was packing up his wares — handbags — which is what all the Somalis in Venice sold, this man outside the Londra Palace included. I was staying at the Londra Palace, and all day long I’d noticed this Somali. Now I was standing in the open window of my hotel room, staring down at the plaza that faced the Lagoon where the Somali was packing up his handbags. He had been standing in the same spot all day, and I wondered how much he managed to rake in over the course of a day, and how much he would eventually be allowed to keep. Suddenly he turned his head, glanced up at my hotel window, and saw me. He might have noticed that I’d been watching him, and he now stood there, craning his neck and staring up at me. He started to laugh. His laughing tongue was bright red. And I stood there. In the window of my room in the Londra Palace, observed by the man whom I’d been observing. The laughing Somali down there, and me up above in the open window of the Londra Palace hotel. He didn’t seem threatening, he was a laughing Somali in Venice, a survivor, who was laughing at the man in the window of the Londra Palace hotel. Yet there was something threatening about us, and there and then I had an idea for a novel, in a single flash. My novel. Impossible, I though
t. It’s impossible, and I know it, and now I have to suffer the consequences of what I’ve known for a long time. From now on I will write only footnotes. Although this insight, from a human point of view, was extremely disheartening, from an artistic point of view it was an edifying thought.
I was unable to explain, even to myself in some wordless language, what a brilliant idea for a novel this was, other than the conviction that from now on I had to write footnotes. But I immediately coupled it to Thomas Mann and Joseph Brodsky and understood it to mean that in some way or other, I was to write footnotes to Brodsky’s Watermark or Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. A strange coupling, between third-world problems and an ambitious literary project that was totally separate from the former.
83F. On closer examination, I’ve come to the realization that what the previous footnote says is wrong. Meaning I’ve remembered things wrong. When I arrived in Venice — this was in June 2004 — I had already decided to work with footnotes. In fact, I’d already decided to make footnotes to Joseph Brodsky’s Watermark when I suddenly got an idea for a novel and a Somali handbag vendor — whom I’d been watching, both down below in the plaza in front of the Lagoon and from my hotel window — turned toward my hotel window late in the evening, craned his neck and observed me as I stood there smoking a cigarette. Then he began to laugh at me, with his bright red tongue. This idea for a novel meant that I lost sight of the footnote idea, replaced by this new idea that was born at that precise moment.
This idea soon faded. It didn’t survive the night; by the following morning it was gone — both the subject matter which, by the way, had never been clear since it consisted of a flash of insight, and also the very fact that I’d even had the idea. I didn’t remember it until now, as I’m writing this. But I hadn’t forgotten the idea about the footnotes for Watermark, and in September of that year I decided to make it happen.
I mention all this — Venice, the sinking city, my room at the Londra Palace (with its window facing the plaza in front of the Lagoon), the Somali, and myself, at the moment when, in a flash, I had a brilliant, unknown idea for a novel, which must have been about my affiliation with the imperialistic system, and the fact that in my memory I’ve combined all of this with what I wanted to write in a work based on footnotes (originally footnotes to another author’s work, but later footnotes to an unknown and unwritten but possibly writable novel by me) — I mention it because I think that all of this, including the distortion of memory, has significance for everything that I have attempted here to say.
83G. I have only one life to live. And I am the one writing this.
83H. Let’s get straight to the point. Why am I doing it this way? Why am I avoiding writing the novel about Armand, as it exists, embryonic, in my consciousness, the way I’ve always written all my other novels, allowing the words to emerge and spill out? I know I’ve said that I want to do something completely different. Can that be it? Something completely different from before, now that I have very few novels left to write?
83I. I’m writing on overtime. My literary output ended with T. Singer, written and published in 1999. Everything after that is an exception, which will never be repeated. Including this.
83J. When I now resist delving into the unwritten novel the way I’ve always delved into it and drawn it forward, it’s because I’m afraid of doing so. I’m afraid of what might result from such work. My time is past, I can accept that. I cannot delve into the unwritten novel and draw it forward, only to see that the result doesn’t hold up. That it isn’t up to my standard. I don’t think the result would have been weak. Just a little weaker than what is my usual standard. And I don’t want that. It’s not my style.
83K. Way in the back of my mind is an absurd notion that I have a responsibility toward humankind. (Is that the same thing as being responsible for humankind? I don’t think so.) I can present a good argument as to why I don’t have this sort of responsibility, nor do I think anyone would seriously point out to me that I have such a responsibility. But there it is.
And sometimes I fall to my knees (in my mind) to say thank you for this unreasonable notion that I have about myself.
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84. Even here “the novel” doesn’t give me anything close to the meaning you would expect it to give. I’m not sure if that’s because the novel is invisible. Or because it can only be glimpsed, now and then. You have to accept the consequences of what is unclear, merely glimpsed, even what is indifferent about this novel. This lack of coherence is extremely troublesome, yet at the same time extremely accurate with regard to the way life is experienced by someone like me. As far as I know, the story has now taken a turn away from what I previously meant to be its central focus: that it’s some sort of story about Everyman. Now that’s no longer true, and at this point Armand has passed sixty-five, he has passed the time of the first footnote. Is now the time to talk about the Disappointment? Disappointment about the fact that you’re no longer living in your own time, but in someone else’s era? Which of course seems noisy. So: the Disappointment and the noise. The words of an aging man. An aging man cursing the future and its men (and women). The sound and the fury. The unbearable noise and the bitter disappointment. The time to ask for communication is apparently over. If this could coincide with an understanding of the invisible novel, with which I’ve been fumbling for more than a year now, I would not be unhappy. Everything that falls into place is lovely to behold, even if it precludes your own inclusion.
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85. There comes a time when you step away from the ranks of your family, though you’re still alive. That’s when you’ve become shadow. Some people become shadow too early, others much too late. Armand feared that he became shadow much too late; in fact, that he hadn’t yet become that. Armand’s situation was perhaps the worst. In three weeks he was going to meet the Twin Sister, up in the mountains. He knew he had to appear before her as Shadow. It was a question of keeping his part of the agreement that had been made long ago.
85B. P.S. There’s a difference between being a shadow, or Shadow, and finding yourself in the shadow, living a shadowy life, and so on. As a reader, and human being, you should not confuse these things. Or else you’ll lose your sense of direction.
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