All of this, which for simplicity’s sake I have presented here as a sort of monologue from you—banal, but all too typical of the times—actually came out in the course of a long, involved conversation during which I kept asking questions and making comments on what you were saying. I crossed my arms and cocked one eyebrow to make myself look as critical and on the ball as I could and every now and again I would frown and give my head a little shake to make it clear that, we-ell, I wasn’t sure I agreed with you there. Generally speaking, I did my best to resemble the image I had of a student and an intellectual, an image possibly inspired by an old but well-known black-and-white photograph of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and other intellectual leading lights deep in discussion around a table in a café in Paris. Or by an old photo of the student radicals behind the Norwegian literary magazine Profil, or maybe a combination of the two, I don’t know. But no matter how critical I tried to seem, I made no attempt to hide that you had made me change my mind about this book. There would have been no point anyway because everyone present knew that the objections I raised were nothing but hairsplitting and quibbling and that nothing I said could shake your central argument. As I’ve said, at that time I was a fairly cocky and strong-minded young woman and I may well have felt humiliated by this, but I honestly don’t believe I did. At any rate I can recall many other similar situations in which I managed to put a positive spin on what felt like a defeat. Having the courage to yield to a better argument is the mark of a true intellectual, I would tell myself, thus giving my dented ego a welcome boost.
Contrary to what I may have thought, however, you showed absolutely no respect for the fact that I bowed to your arguments and conceded that you had made me look at Naïve. Super with fresh eyes. You didn’t understand people like me, you said, shaking your head and laughing. “First you loathe the book and advise everyone not to read it, but as soon as I put it into a social context and come up with a simple, off-the-cuff interpretation involving some sort of political message, you change your mind. For Christ’s sake, woman, you’re what—twenty-two? twenty-three?—but you act like a cranky, uptight old Maoist. Everything in that book has to add up somehow, and not only add up, it has to add up in such a way that it can be used to some ‘socially useful’ end” (here, I remember, you raised your hands and made quotation marks with your fingers). “You don’t seem to think a book is any good until you’ve reduced it to a trite battle cry.”
Not until long after this did I realize what an impact your words actually had on me. I don’t recall how I reacted at the time, but I don’t think anything dramatic happened. The discussion probably just petered out as such discussions tend to do, one of us may have got up and said he was going to get more coffee, did anybody else want some? Somebody may have looked at his watch and been surprised to see how late it was, his next lecture started in a couple of minutes, he had to run. Or maybe a third person asked who was up for going to Café 3B that evening, it was Tuesday, after all, cheap wine night. I don’t know.
But your words stayed with me and in the months that followed I found myself thinking about them—not every day, possibly not even every week, but now and again they would cross my mind and almost always due to something Torkild had said or done that annoyed me. When I was listening to music, for example, and he simply had to let me know how awful he thought it was. Not that he ever said it straight out, not normally, anyway, he liked to come across as an open-minded, easygoing sort of a guy who respected the fact that my taste in music was different from his, so the slaughter was usually conducted in subtle and benign fashion. “Is someone torturing that man?” he would joke when Kurt Cobain’s voice rose to a distorted wail at the end of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night,” and “Not exactly Bob Dylan,” he might remark when he felt moved to point out the stupidity or banality of some song lyric. And it wasn’t uncommon for him to then play a record that he declared to be a pioneering number within the same genre as the Norwegian band I had been listening to. “Listen to this instead,” he would say, putting on one of Neil Young’s earliest records. “The deLillos do their best, but they can never match their hero, and that’s putting it mildly.” I would then be treated to a long lecture on the unique qualities of Neil Young’s music.
As is so often the way with men, Torkild was, you see, intent on shaping me in his own image. Not that he ever said as much, of course, but he aimed to teach me. Train me. Make me his disciple. And he was well on the way to succeeding too. It became rarer and rarer for me to play music I knew he didn’t like, not just when he wasn’t home, but also when I was on my own in the flat. And if I did, I always had a vague feeling of guilt and shame. It was the same with books, films, television, and even food and wine. My conscience would prick me if I listened to bright, poppy Radio P3 rather than the more cerebral P2, if I bought a frozen pizza for myself instead of making dinner from scratch, if I read one of the tabloids, VG or Dagbladet, instead of a serious newspaper like Morgenbladet or Klassekampen or, worse still, yielded to the temptation to watch what you would later dub “a folk tale for our times,” but which Torkild naturally regarded as trashy light entertainment—namely, Hotel Caesar on TV2. As a teenager living at home with Mom, I had been hooked on a number of soaps, but by this time I was only ever watching the occasional episode, always in deepest secrecy, and it’s no exaggeration to say that I felt dirty afterward. In fact, however ridiculous it may sound now, more than once I tried—albeit unconsciously—to make up for this by picking up a particularly weighty novel shortly after switching off the TV.
For a long time, when forced to explain why I tried so hard to embrace high culture and reject its popular counterpart, I blamed forces beyond my control. “I was so much in love, I would have done anything to be the way I thought Torkild wanted me to be,” I would say. “I was plagued by guilt every time I watched a romantic comedy or listened to some light, bubbly pop music because I felt I was letting him down,” I would go on before describing—a mite ruefully—how I would force myself to read books I was in no way equipped to understand, and how I therefore became a sort of female equivalent of that guy in A Fish Called Wanda, you know, the one who quotes Nietzsche without understanding a word of it. On other occasions again I’ve spoken of intellectual snobbery when describing myself at that time in my life. I’ve talked of my own so-called class journey, of how I was brought up by a single mother who had to do two jobs in order to feed me and my two sisters and spent most of her free time watching American talk shows, and of how she and I became more and more estranged after I went to university, of how she accused me of showing off by using fancy foreign words and extolling all the things that ordinary people knew nothing about, and how this in turn increased my dislike of the popular culture that she represented.
There was some truth in all of this.
Today, though, I can see that ideology and mental attitude were even more important keys to understanding why I was so ridiculously eager to cultivate my inner connoisseur. Because this too, of course, came down to the most important issue of our age: environmental protection. I had been a member of Nature and Youth for several years before I met Torkild, so the idea that we in the West needed to reduce our consumption dramatically to prevent a future climate crisis was not something I got from him. Not at all. The concept of reduced consumption was already deeply ingrained in me, a mantra I repeated in discussion after discussion. It was an indisputable truth as far as I was concerned, and before moving into my first sublet I actually persuaded the landlord to install an economy shower and weather-strip the leaky window. I cycled, walked, or took the bus everywhere, I was heavily into recycling and bought most of my clothes from goodwill shops or flea markets—none of it particularly heroic, perhaps, since I was living on a student loan and had to watch my money anyway. But still, when I met and eventually moved in with Torkild, something changed. Slowly but surely the battle zone expanded, to use Houellebecq’s words. Torkild was even more obsessed with restricting one’s consumption and
leading an environmentally sound life than I was, he was more consistent and thorough, more extreme, if you like. But that’s not really the point here. The point is that the philosophy behind this commitment to environmental issues colored every aspect of his life. To someone who takes environmental preservation seriously and actually has decided to reduce his own personal consumption, it is of course important that what he does consume should be of the best. And this was what made Torkild a connoisseur. This was why he would rather we share a bottle of amarone costing 250 kroner than get plastered on five bottles of cheap plonk, why he abhorred processed foods and insisted on serving microscopic gourmet dishes prepared by him in our very sparsely equipped student kitchen, and why he was always on the lookout for the real and the authentic in art and culture, for things that were original and innovative, classic, things that were indisputably good and that he could therefore justify spending time, effort, and money on. The idea of rationing, which was all part of being a true environmentalist, imbued everything he said and did, in fact it strikes me as I write this that it may even have influenced the way he spoke and acted. It was as if the need to be prudent, to exercise moderation and self-restraint applied here as well. He detested small talk and idle chatter, for example. As far as he was concerned, if you didn’t have anything sensible to say, you should simply shut up and read a good book. He had only a handful of close friends and he told me straight out that he had no great need to get to know my university pals, he simply didn’t have time for any more friends.
And Torkild was gradually instilling all of this, this attitude to life, so to speak, in me. Or at least, instilling is possibly the wrong word. I was, as I said, already resolved to keep my consumption low and environmentally friendly before I met him, so it’s perhaps more correct to say that he was in the process of polishing me. When I met him I was a sort of rough diamond and now he was going to make me shine. And not only to shine in his eyes, mark you, because even though I harbored feelings of shame and guilt and a fair bit of resentment at being corrected and schooled, I was pleased with the progress I was making. I was convinced, you see, that suppressing my own bad taste and my simple and occasionally vulgar needs was all part of my personal maturation process. If I was to grow as a human being, I couldn’t just fritter away my time and energy—by sitting slumped in front of the television for example—and every time I resisted the temptation to do exactly that I proved to myself, if you like, that I was on the right track, something that was, in itself, deeply satisfying. But there were lots of positive sides as well: most importantly perhaps all the great discussions we had, all the interesting articles and books I was introduced to, all the wonderful music, all the delicious and exciting dishes, the walks in Rondane National Park, skiing expeditions in the Dovre and Børgefjell mountains. Because it wasn’t, of course, as though I actually disliked or didn’t understand everything that Torkild introduced me to. Much of it gave me a lot of pleasure.
But still, something wasn’t quite right. There was something fundamentally wrong with my life. To begin with it made itself felt in relatively lengthy spells of depression that I couldn’t quite explain. I would feel sluggish, listless, and unable to go to lectures. I had no motivation, no interest in going anywhere or seeing anyone. I couldn’t face answering the phone or opening the door if someone rang the bell and I would stay in bed till noon. I could be irritable and out of sorts for days at a time, and when Torkild asked what was wrong I would often make up some excuse: I had my period, I was worried about my exams, and so on. Just as the need to present a cogent and coherent account may lead me to caricature Torkild slightly in this letter, so it is also quite possible that this same need has led me to give you more credit than you strictly speaking deserve. But let me say it anyway: it was what you said in the cafeteria at Dragvoll that made me see what was wrong with me. “For Christ’s sake, woman, you’re twenty-two, but you act like an old Maoist,” you said. And there it was, that was my problem. Not only was I becoming extremely earnest and sensible, not only was I becoming rigid, orthodox, and ruthlessly dismissive of anything that could not be justified according to the philosophy I have just outlined. I was a student in her early twenties with the mindset of a middle-aged woman. Whether biology had anything to do with this I don’t know, but to me at least it seemed as though I had skipped a stage in life, a stage we are all actually supposed to go through.
For where was the wildness of youth? Where was that don’t-give-a-fuck mentality, that madcap spirit, not to mention the carefree, fun-loving, commitment-free life of student days? All gone. Or no, not gone, it was all still there, but stifled by a philosophy that imposed on me the virtues of moderation and pragmatism. There was a scatterbrained teenager inside me, but I was forcing myself to live the way one ought to live at the age I am now and maybe not even then. And it was you who put this into words for me. When I turned down an invitation to go to Café 3B with the girls in my class because Torkild had bought scallops from Hitra or a locally produced blue cheese and a bottle of good Tokay for us to enjoy that evening, I would find myself thinking about what you had said. When Torkild sneered at those same fellow students for choosing to go and see an action movie at the local cinema instead of coming to the Trøndelag Theater with us to see a modern production of An Enemy of the People (which, according to Torkild, was actually all about environmental protection), your words came into my head again. When I scoffed at Mom for liking James Dean and then found myself arguing that the United States had colonized Norway with the aid of inane light entertainment and that she was, in fact, an American, the same thing happened. But the feeling of being “like an old Maoist” was never stronger than when I was with my sisters, May Lene and Mette, even though they were both quite a bit older than me.
Mette and May Lene were alike both in looks and in personality, but as Mom once said: “I’ve never met anyone who would have guessed that Susanne was related to either of you, and certainly not that she was your sister.” While Mette and May Lene looked like Dad and were tall and blond with almost fashion-model good looks, I took after Mom and was small, dark, and very ordinary looking. While my nights out were spent at Café 3B (usually in “Africa,” the darkest, smokiest corner in the place, right behind the toilets), Mette and May Lene went dancing at clubs such as Frakken or Bajazzo. While I spent ten minutes in the bathroom before going out and always wore some variation on the aforementioned student radical uniform, Mette and May Lene could spend two hours putting on their makeup and getting dressed and when they eventually emerged, they would have looked perfectly at home on the most exclusive of red carpets. They loved getting all dolled up, and unlike me—who preferred to look as natural as possible and felt embarrassed to admit that I did actually use a little makeup now and again—they made no secret of the fact that it was important to them to look good. They used creams and lotions that cost as much as I spent on clothes and shoes in a year and had no qualms about it. In fact they seemed to be annoyingly unburdened by any feelings of guilt or shame. They were bright, forthright, and outgoing. When they got drunk, they could become loud and boisterous, dance on tables and get a sing-along going, but they could also be extremely sexy and sultry, not to say vulgar. They seduced and allowed themselves to be seduced, they had one-night stands at the drop of a hat, and when we met for coffee at Erichsen’s the next day (we always had coffee at Erichsen’s on Saturday), they would regale the rest of us with stories of their Friday night exploits. “He was like a rabbit in bed,” May Lene said once, laughing. “I felt like an acrobat at the circus,” Mette said on another occasion. “He kept wanting to change position, first he had me on my stomach, then on my back, then on my knees, and then he decided he wanted me to sit on top of him. My head was spinning by the end, I kid you not, no exaggeration.” That’s how they went on. They were living proof, to me at least, that Marilyn Monroe was right when she said: “Blondes have more fun” (it was she who said that, wasn’t it?). I tried to tell myself that they were le
ss intelligent than me and more naïve, I tried to pigeonhole them as dumb blondes, but I knew that wasn’t true, or not the whole truth anyway. My sisters might not have read as many books as I had and they couldn’t quote Arne Næss or Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng and talk about deep ecology, but they were no less deep than me. And certainly no less intelligent. Although I hate to admit it, to myself or anyone else, Mette was smarter than me. Not only was she better with numbers than I was and far better than me when it came to mental arithmetic—which was only to be expected, I suppose, of someone who had gone to business school in Bergen—but more than once I’ve also known her to comprehend and grasp the essence of a complex text or conversation much more quickly than I could—and that was a far greater blow to my ego, that really hurt. Well, I would tell myself, at least I lead a much fuller life than they do. While I endeavored to grow a little more as a human being each day, their lives were marked by “the unbearable lightness of being,” they squandered their time and energy and talents on things that would, in the long run, prove worthless and one day they would look in the mirror and discover that their once lovely features had been replaced by the wrinkled faces of elderly ladies, and come that day, the day when boys and men no longer turned to look at them on the street, they would be filled with regret, then they would realize that they had wasted their lives on fun and games and frivolity. This is what I tried to tell myself. In slightly less dramatic terms, it’s true, but this was what I told myself. Mere excuses all of it, of course. There was absolutely nothing to suggest that the things they filled their lives with were a substitute for something more profound and more meaningful that they couldn’t be bothered striving to achieve, there was nothing to suggest that the makeup, the expensive clothes, and the casual sex were a way of escaping from the realities of life. They simply did more of whatever they felt like doing, they were more honest with themselves than I was, they took their own needs seriously, and not only their intellectual needs, all their needs. That was why they were happier than I was.
Aftermath Page 18