DAVID: Oh, honestly. On what do you base such an assertion?
MARIA: Take the anger you feel for Alfred and Rita. You talk condescendingly of Rita, the lonely stay-at-home rich-man’s wife having undergone a personal crisis, and become positively aggressive when you describe how she found meaning through what you refer to as New Age crap. You’re actually mad at her because she has found the meaning in life that you’re so desperate to discover yourself. You’re always trying to present yourself and Rita as being so different from each other, but to me the similarities between you are far more striking and interesting than the differences. And … the anger you display at their wish to honor Jonathan by having Henrik christened on the eleventh of September … in Jonathan’s christening robe … I don’t think that anger springs from your aversion to christenings as such, or not primarily anyway. I think it angers you for much the same reason as Rita’s New Age theories. I think it angers you because you can see that they find meaning and comfort in the ritual of christening and because this reminds you that you’re unable to find the meaning and comfort you seek in your own life.
DAVID: God Almighty, Maria. That is so far-fetched. It’s the way they go about it that gets to me. Because I feel I’m being steamrollered.
MARIA: I see that. It fits with my description of you as being conflict averse, so that I believe. But I think it has as much to do with being forced to confront your own feelings of emptiness. All in all, well … I find the way you think about and talk about Alfred and Rita interesting, David. Especially your relationship with Alfred … I mean … Alfred and Rita lost their son in the terrorist attacks on 9/11. So they have experienced war and terrorism firsthand, it actually affected them, it touched them personally. And in many ways this jolted them out of their comfortable existence in what you just described as a sated, decadent oil-rich Norway. Alfred sold his clinics and resolved to devote the rest of his life to doing something worthwhile, right? There he was, a changed man, a man who wanted to make a difference. And not only that … after 9/11 he insisted on discussing politics with you. I remember you saying you could never be sure when he might try to draw you into a discussion. So it seems to me that what Alfred went through forced him to put his faith in discourse as a means to achieving resolution. And 9/11 was so awful that—for fear of something similar happening again—he instinctively came to believe in involvement, in words, in dialogue …
DAVID: Dialogue? The man wanted to bomb Iraq back to the Stone Age.
MARIA: That may be, but there’s a difference, surely, between casual remarks he made in a conversation on international politics and the way he talks and acts at an interpersonal level. I mean … what he said about Iraq might simply have been an attempt to provoke a discussion with you. Or possibly just a rather careless observation, which you misunderstood. I don’t know. In any case: if I understand you correctly, in his encounters with other people he is certainly much more willing to engage in discussion and dialogue than he used to be and this could be regarded as a response to what 9/11 did to him. Alfred has seen and felt the consequences of fanaticism, he has witnessed what obdurate individuals are capable of, how badly things can go when people are left in peace to create and immerse themselves in their own fictional universe. And he quite instinctively behaves in ways we associate with the opposite of fanaticism.
DAVID: To be honest I don’t know where you’re going with this.
MARIA: It seems to me that this side of Alfred offends you. I think … well, for one thing, I think this new Alfred offends you because he dares you to hold opinions on important issues. It’s hard for someone as averse to conflict as you are to form—and, not least, to express—clear answers and definite opinions. And for another I think Alfred offends you because he’s so … how shall I put it … because he engages with reality in a very different way from you. It’s hard to explain, but witnessing the way in which Alfred has changed has, I think, thrown into relief and intensified an inner conflict you have always felt. You have a great longing for authenticity, David, but you also find it impossible to believe that any one thing is more authentic than any other.
DAVID: Okay. Now I get it.
MARIA: What do you get?
DAVID: This is your take on Susanne’s version of me. You know: the romantic who hates romanticism.
MARIA: I may well have been influenced by her letter. I learned a lot about you from all eight letters.
DAVID: [laughing] Oh, for heaven’s sake … you take tiny snippets from different parts of my life and cobble them together to form a theory that, on the surface, seems correct but is in fact pure fiction—just as Susanne and the people who wrote those letters did. Or as Rita does with her ludicrous New Age theories, for that matter. [brief pause]. Do you remember how I said a while back that Ingrid fell in love with me because she saw something of her father in me? I said this was true, but that it was also a trite, boring explanation for what brought us together, one that a part of me refuses to believe.
MARIA: Hm.
DAVID: We’re always looking for unexpected and interesting explanations for things, I think that’s what I said. We don’t give a shit whether the explanation is true or not, so long as it’s a good one. The same could be said of you when you sit here analyzing your patients. Me included.
MARIA: You’re wrong about that. But you have a point, I grant you.
DAVID: A point? During the research for my new book I read about a serious study in which several different psychologists examined the same patients and arrived at the same diagnosis in only two cases out of ten.
MARIA: I know there are some disheartening studies out there. But they’re some years old. And if you like I can show you other studies that indicate that things have improved since then.
DAVID: That’s as may be. But it doesn’t alter the fact that you could pick out any detail from my life and use it to confirm or disprove almost any theory whatsoever. And hey … while you’re at it, why not include the dreams in which I turn into an animal. They would slot perfectly into your narrative. After all, it’s our ability to make choices that sets us apart from animals, right? If we elect not to choose, we cease, to some extent, to be human, so obviously that’s what my dreams must be trying to tell me, that that’s what’s happening.
MARIA: As I say, I’m not so interested in the significance of your dreams in themselves.
DAVID: I’m simply trying to make the point that anything can be used to confirm or disprove anything. I … I think you were furious when I revealed that I’d actually been conducting research all along and that this whole therapy thing was a sham. You hide it well, but I think you feel you’ve been caught out, exposed, and that this … what should I call it … existentially inspired theory you’ve constructed on the basis of Susanne’s letter is simply a desperate attempt to maintain the illusion that what you are practicing is science. But it isn’t. What you do when you sit in that chair of yours is no more scientific than what everyone else does every fucking day. [laughs] Incapable of making important choices! Banal women’s-mag philosophy, but hey, why not? It’s trendy if nothing else.
MARIA: Now you’re doing the same with me as you did with those letters, David. But just because everything is liable to fictionalization doesn’t mean that everything is fiction. You shouldn’t need me to remind you that the nineties are actually over.
DAVID: Meaning?
MARIA: I’m trying to say that what I said about you a moment ago is truer than all the other possible descriptions of you. [pauses for a moment] In fact I interpret that last statement of yours as a sign that what I said about you is correct. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but you seem to have the idea that everything is fiction and that there’s no way of getting at the truth—even when it comes to the question of your identity. And this makes it nigh on impossible for you to decide who to be and what to do with your life. You have no idea what’s right for you because you have no idea who you are. You’re falling apart, David … you
’re starting to break down into a string of situation-appropriate personas. And … and I think all those letters have left you even less sure of who you are. Receiving so many different versions of your life, so to speak, has affected you much more deeply than you are willing to admit. Which makes it all the more necessary for you to dismiss the whole lot as fiction. You try to convince me and yourself that you don’t care what it says in those letters.
DAVID: Now, listen …
MARIA: But if you find it hard to accept the letters themselves … then think about the concern and compassion that lie behind them. Regardless of whether they’ve been edited by Susanne, the fact is that people who know you, or have known you, sat down and wrote long letters to you. They put a lot of time and energy into them, David, and they did it for you. And even if you choose to go on insisting that they are all pure fiction, I think you should at least be willing to accept the compassion invested in them. Because you are worth it, David. Even though you may find it hard to believe, you are worth it.
[Pause. David clears his throat.]
MARIA: Here!
DAVID: I don’t need it.
MARIA: Take a tissue, David.
DAVID: It’s not necessary.
MARIA: But I can see …
DAVID: [raising his voice] It’s not necessary, I said. [pause] You know what, right now I feel a bit like Arnold Juklerød must have felt. Do you remember? That guy from Telemark back in the seventies who started out objecting to the closure of his daughter’s school and was eventually committed to a mental hospital, diagnosed as paranoid, and condemned as a troublemaker? When he protested against the conduct of the psychiatric profession, well, they said, this wasn’t because he had good reason to protest, no, no, it was a clear sign that he was suffering from persecution mania. And when I question your assertions about me, it can’t possibly be because I actually have good reason to doubt what you say, no, no, it has to be because I’m some sort of nineties postmodernist, who’s incapable of believing that anything is true.
MARIA: David! Don’t back out now. We’re onto something very imp—
DAVID: Now you’re putting yourself above reproach, Maria.
MARIA: David. Listen to me. You have just acknowledged that those letters affected you deeply and that is the first real progress—
DAVID: [raising his voice] This is an abuse of power, do you realize that?
MARIA: Take it easy, David. David!
DAVID: Are you scared?
MARIA: Should I be?
DAVID: Oh, don’t you just wish I would answer that question. Don’t you just wish I would lose my temper right now.
MARIA: Why would I want that?
DAVID: Because that would provide you with even more proof that your theory is right. You hit a raw nerve and I snapped, right? No, Maria, you don’t need to be scared. [brief pause, wry laughter] Maybe this choice theory of yours is actually a form of projection. Not so very different from that practiced by all the people who responded to the newspaper ad by writing to me. Maybe this is really about your problem with the Methodist Church … and whether you should break away from it or not.
MARIA: David. Please …
DAVID: [more wry laughter] In other words, what you’ve discerned is your own reluctance to choose, to make decisions, your own aversion to conflict.
MARIA: David. You mustn’t back out now.
DAVID: But you’re wrong, dammit! I’m no more afraid of making choices than anyone else. Simply choosing to conduct this part of my research and then to actually go through with it, that was such a big and such a crucial decision for me that that alone is enough to disprove your theory. Or … oh, I’ve plenty of examples of big decisions I’ve made. To have a child, for instance. Or … or …
[Long silence. We hear David crying.]
MARIA: You’re not alone, David. There are a lot of people who care about you. And you’re worth it.
DAVID: [sighs] Oh, dear.
MARIA: You’re worth that concern.
Bangsund, October 31st, 2006. In fairy tale
THE SUN HAS JUST REACHED the front of the house and the crackling of frost on the paving stones glints up at us. I wheel the baby carriage over to the window and put on the brake with my foot, hear the faint rustle of a magpie hopping across the crisp, frosted leaves in the garden.
“We should let him sleep on, don’t you think?” I say.
“Oh, yes,” Ingrid says. She brings her hands up to her mouth, rubs them together, and blows on them a couple of times. “He sleeps much better in the fresh air.”
I bend over the baby carriage, pull back a corner of the bunting bag, and peer in at Henrik. His pacifier hangs limply from the corner of his mouth. I try to slip it back in, but he curls his tongue and pushes it out again, once, twice, but then he accepts it. I wait a moment, watch as the pacifier works quickly in and out, then abruptly stops and stays glued to his lips. I tuck the corner of the bag in again, slip the little wooden toggle through the loop, and glance up at Ingrid. She sticks her hands in her duffle-coat pockets, hugs her arms to her sides, and hunches her shoulders, chittering.
“Brrr, that wind off the water is bitter,” she says, hopping from one foot to the other. “They might not like having the window open.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, we’ll need to leave the kitchen window open if we’re going to let Henrik sleep on. So your mom and dad will hear him when he wakes up.”
“Oh, Ingrid, please,” I say.
“What?”
“Can’t you just call them Kåre and Klara?” I whisper, no one can hear us, but I automatically lower my voice anyway. “It doesn’t feel right to call them my mom and dad. I’ve only known them a few days.”
“Sorry, David. I forgot.”
I smile at her.
“I sometimes feel you talk like that because you want things to move a bit faster,” I say.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that you talk as though we were a perfectly ordinary family because you want us to feel and behave like a perfectly ordinary family.”
“You may be right,” she says, smiling back. “But if I do it’s only because I … I so want this to go well, David. For your sake.”
I go up to her, gently stroke her hair back from her eyes.
“So do I. But if it’s to go well, I think it’s important that we don’t fool ourselves into imagining that things are anything other than they are,” I say. I press my forehead to hers and run my thumbs over her cold, rosy cheeks.
“I love you, David,” she whispers, putting her arms around my waist. “And I’m so glad you decided to come back to us.”
“I love you, too,” I say. “And I’m so glad you asked me to come back.”
We stand there gazing into each other’s eyes for a few moments, then pull apart.
“Come on, let’s go inside,” Ingrid says. “We’ve got to be going soon anyway.”
I let out a soft sigh.
“Oh, come on. It’ll be interesting to see the rest of the plant,” Ingrid says.
“I’m sure it will be. I just don’t feel like going for yet another sail in the cold. I’d much rather stay here and help with the preparations for Halloween,” I say. “Rikard’s kids are going to make ghost pizza and blood jelly and stuff.”
Ingrid laughs and shakes her head as we go up the stone steps, me first, her a little behind me. It’s so bizarre, all this, to find myself in such a situation, it’s so unreal, we’ve been here almost a week, but it’s still hard to believe that this is actually happening. I open the door, go through the vestibule and into the hall, study the huge oil painting of my biological grandfather as I pull off my jacket and hang it on the coatrack. There is a resemblance, certainly, although it’s not as great as Ingrid would have it, but she’s so keen for me to feel connected to my birth family that she tends to exaggerate the likeness, I think—it’s another attempt on her part to help me move on, so to speak. I appreciate wh
at she’s trying to do, of course, but it’s true what I said to her a moment ago: if this is to work, it’s important that I don’t fool myself into thinking that things are anything other than they are, everything in me is telling me this. I take a step back, drop down onto the green velour sofa, and hear the squeak of tight springs giving under my weight. I sit there bouncing up and down for a moment, then bend down and start to untie my shoelaces. I hear Ingrid closing the front door and a split second later the kitchen door creaks open in the draft.
“It’s got nothing to do with you personally,” I hear Kåre say. “All I’m saying is that it’s hard to remain mindful of your responsibilities when you’re so far removed from them.”
“We’re creating jobs down there,” Rikard says. “Economic growth. Prosperity.”
“To be honest I’ve been in business for far too long to buy that. We pay our workers next to nothing. And we don’t pay any tax either! And, as if that weren’t enough, we’re ruining the local fishing industry, we commandeer waters they’ve been fishing for centuries, we pollute the surrounding area with salt, antibiotic residue, and all sorts of chemicals, and we’re catching prawn spawn in a way that’s endangering the fish stocks down there. I read somewhere that for every juvenile prawn we catch, we also catch fifty fish fry, which are then dumped.”
“We abide by the existing regulations,” I hear Rikard say as I slip my foot out of one shoe, there’s a faint pop as my slightly sweaty heel comes away from the leather.
“Oh, I’m sure you do, but then again, there are next to no regulations down there,” Kåre says. “To put it bluntly, we’re doing things we know we shouldn’t be doing. And it’s easier not to think about your own ethical and moral failings when the people who suffer the consequences of these are on the other side of the world, because then it doesn’t seem quite real, it’s only a story. That’s what I’m trying to say.”
Aftermath Page 42