Knots

by Gunnhild Øyehaug

  * * *

  Maurice Blanchot got out of bed and went into the living room. His living room was empty. The wooden floor was cold under his bare feet and he thought to himself that it was definitely autumn. The room was cold and he looked out onto the street; the tree that reached up to his window had turned yellow without him noticing. He opened the window, stretched out, grabbed hold of a branch and shook it as hard as he could.

  * * *

  Voilà.

  * * *

  Yellow leaves rained down from the tree, spinning to the ground. He looked down. There were plenty there from before. It’s definitely autumn! Blanchot said and shivered, as he was standing there in only his underpants. It smelled of damp soil. Rain. He closed the window. Went out into the hall to get his bag and pulled out the Arvo Pärt CD. The strange thing was that Blanchot had bought the CD the day before on his way home from a lonely evening in a lonely bar. He knew nothing about Arvo Pärt, he had just decided on impulse to go into the music shop that was open late, and suddenly found himself staring at the light green CD cover with a name on it that appealed to him, without him being able to explain why, ARVO PÄRT—it often happened to Maurice Blanchot that a name appealed to him. He thought about names as great, heavy freighters that glided past in the dark on the world’s vast oceans, never meeting, other than in collision or by blowing their horns from a distance. Buying the CD was like sounding his horn, a long call from a lonely ship; he had bought it, put it in his bag. Forgotten it. Gone to bed without thinking that he’d bought a new CD. Fallen asleep. Woken with the music playing in his ears. That is to say, how could he know that it was that music he woke up to, playing in his ears? He just knew that it was. He put the CD into the CD player. Pressed play.

  Voilà.

  The music.

  Precisely the music he had woken up to playing in his ears. “How can you explain that?” Blanchot asked no one. But the room was somehow full of something completely new. Blanchot lay down on the bright blue Persian carpet and listened. “It’s like being underwater,” he said. He closed his eyes, let his hands run gently along the soft fibers of the carpet. The picture of the bridge in Prague popped into his mind again. But this time he was floating in the gray flowing water, approaching the bridge feetfirst, he could see the toes of his shoes sticking up in front of him like the prow of a gondola, and the bridge was getting closer, like a mouth, closer and closer, the whole horizon was getting strangely close, a jagged city skyline, church spires, overhead tram lines, and the bridge. The bridge reared up dramatically above him and he slipped under, it got darker, he could only just make out the pattern of the cement that joined the stone blocks and then he slipped out on the other side, and he saw that in the time that he was under the bridge, dusk had fallen and a flock of blackbirds swooped over him. And then he spotted the soles of another pair of shoes. Coming in the opposite direction, upstream, toward the bridge. Blanchot lifted his head a little so that he could see better, and now he could see that the soles belonged to a long pair of legs, a body, and a head. It was I, Julio Cortàzar, who was floating toward him with the same surprised look on my face. As we slipped by one another, Maurice Blanchot said: “You’re going against the current!” And I had time to say “No” before we passed one another, Maurice Blanchot going downstream, and I upstream and under the bridge.

  Air

  Geir stood on a spot of clear tarmac between the crusts of ice, just where the rotten quay started. He couldn’t see anything of Asle, who had jumped over the edge. Had he been holding the stone in his hands when he jumped? Geir thought he had. All he heard was a splash, and he couldn’t see any big stones lying around. As long as he hadn’t tied himself to it. He had read about that, about people who wanted to take their own lives, who tied themselves to a rock so they couldn’t get loose or rise up again, in other words, they sank pitilessly to the bottom, and so drowned. Geir looked at the bar of chocolate in his hand, he dropped it as if it were burning, why on earth had he taken a bar of chocolate with him? He wanted to pick it up again, but then thought there was no time to lose, he had to do something, maybe he should even jump in (he really didn’t want to do that!), he bent down halfway toward the bar of chocolate, realized what he was doing, straightened up again. Aargh! Bent down again, straightened up again. No, he had to jump. He took a step out onto the quay, but then suddenly thought that it would be best to take off his thermal overalls, so they wouldn’t fill with water and pull Geir to the bottom as well. If only his hands weren’t shaking so much! And it was bitingly cold. He peeled off the upper part, pulled off the legs, took off his shoes, socks, stood there in his long johns, his woolen underwear, blue, brand-new, that he’d got for Christmas. He looked around. He hadn’t shouted for help yet, he didn’t know why, but he hadn’t known for sure if Asle jumping was serious or not. It might just be some crazy idea. And if he did shout for help, and it was just a crazy idea, then people would think he was in on it. And now it was too late to shout, now that he was standing there in his long johns. People would think it was him who needed help. To get dressed again! Geir chuckled at the thought. Oh, but there was no time to lose. He had to get a move on and jump. But then his long johns would get wet! The worst thing Geir knew was wet wool. It itched like hell. So he took them off. He took them off and put them down on the thermal overalls. The thermal overalls would be all right there. When he got out, he could dry himself with his thermal vest. So now he was standing there in his string vest and briefs. His trapper’s hat—what was he going to do with that? Asle must have drowned by now, he was going to be too late, there was no time to waste! He’d better keep it on. But then he’d—damn, he threw it down. He took some steps onto the quay. He was shivering. It was cold, and it was icy, and he was scared. The quay creaked. He should just run across before it collapsed! It would be a bit of a mess if the whole quay suddenly lay there floating on the surface, he might miss Asle in all the chaos, he made up his mind, felt it like a spasm in his stomach, he ran over and just then a head popped out of the water, a face drained of any color, a thin head gasping for air, and Geir slipped on a clump of ice, his legs shot into the air, and he knew with every fiber of his body, floating, that this was it, the quay was going to collapse, he was going to fall, and everything would be chaos. He landed heavily on his back, his back thumped down on the quay. The quay held. Dazed, he crawled back onto the asphalt. Asle scrambled to get ashore, he slipped on the stones. Geir limped over to him, bent down, held out his hand. Asle grabbed it, his hand was icy cold. Then he staggered onto dry land, white as a sheet and dripping. “I couldn’t breathe,” he said. “No,” Geir said. “Just didn’t work!” he said. “Sorry to hear that,” Geir said. There was silence, Asle stood there dripping, gasping for air. “I’ve heard that you have to tie yourself to the stone,” Geir said. “Or rather, I’ve read.” Asle raised his eyebrows. “Right,” he said. Geir nodded, a little uncertain. “Well, well,” Geir said. “Quite a day! People have been slipping and falling outside the flower shop, I think there’s a really icy patch there. Three in a row went down on their asses just now!” Asle nodded, looked around. Looked at Geir. And then walked off.

  * * *

  Geir stood there for a moment or two, watched him go, leaving behind a stream of seawater, his thin body giving off steam in the cold. Kipper, Geir thought, and had to laugh, his teeth were chattering because he was so cold, thin as a kipper. Then he felt the pain in the soles of his feet, he was standing on ice, it bit into his skin. His tailbone, his back ached. He limped over to the small pile of clothes. Looked around, put on his thermals. As he pulled his long johns up over his thighs, he saw Åsta toddling along pulling her cart behind her. She gave Geir a stern look, which he pretended not to see. He smiled, lifted his hand in greeting, and pulled his long johns up around his waist with the other hand. Pulled on his thermal overalls, his socks, shoes, and trapper’s hat. Limped over to the van. His feet were cold, his stomach burning. Opened the door, got in, it hurt to si
t down. Damn, he’d forgotten the bar of chocolate. But he didn’t want to go back and get it now. Now that he was back in the van. But it was a whole bar of cooking chocolate! He didn’t want to. But he opened the door carefully, all the same, stuck his foot out, but then heard someone coming, so he pulled it back in, closed the door. Too gently. Aargh! He opened the door wide, slammed it shut. He had to laugh. It must have looked odd! A van door being opened only to be slammed shut. He looked out at the street. Not many people about, all in all, no, must be the slippery ice. What about the houses, were people standing in the windows? He leaned forward and looked up at the houses. He saw a shadow move back from the window above the shoemaker. Geir swallowed. Turned on the radio. Too bad about the chocolate. He looked over at Åsta making her way over the ice with grips on her shoes. She waddled like a goose, Geir thought to himself. Goosta, he thought, and had to laugh, hehe, but it wasn’t a proper laugh. Well, well, what a day it had been. He looked up at the window to see if there were any more people. He felt a warm flush through his body. He had been standing there in his underpants and vest. Phew, a bit hot in here! What should he do now, maybe he should just drive home, yes, maybe. Or he could sit here. People might think he’d left early because he was embarrassed. He wasn’t embarrassed! And there might still be some entertainment to be had outside the flower shop, unless someone had salted the sidewalk. And then there was that bar of chocolate! He couldn’t just drive off and leave it. No, he’d stay put.

  Transcend

  SHE (doesn’t really want this)

  SHE (is fed up with herself and the situation)

  THIS SITUATION (where she feels naked, undressed, FAR TOO MUCH longing, she wants it to stop, that is, at least, after THIS SITUATION, she wants it to stop)

  SHE (believes that as a thinking person it should be perfectly clear that she is dealing with a Don Juan, but for a person of longing, it’s not so easy)

  DON JUAN (“pron. don hwan; Span. ‘Sir John,’ a legendary libertine, womanizer, seducer, Casanova,” is pulling off her sweater)

  SHE (longs for the total fusion between two people and is bitterly aware that this is not possible with a Don Juan; he will just move on. A Don Juan is an absurd person, someone who exhausts all possibilities and moves on, who acts as though there were no consequences, as though there were no forever)

  SOME (humanism, that is!!)

  SHE (needs to imagine forever)

  SHE (thinks of the world as an eternity where the total fusion is forever—a tautology in itself)

  ONE COULD CALL IT (in principle, a longing, if you imagine that LONGING, as a feeling, stretches beyond its own boundaries, and so, if you pursue it, is a feeling that belongs to something eternal, in contrast to, say, happiness, which is transient and of a more instant nature)

  SHE (gets more and more PISSED at the thought that once again she is distorting her own ideas in this situation)

  SHE (wants a final and absolute end to this)

  SHE (has thought of demonstrating this by not having an orgasm)

  HE (is pulling off her sweater)

  HE (is pulling off her pants and underwear)

  SHE (makes some resistance)

  SHE (stands there naked and undressed)

  HE (does things with her nipples)

  HE (does more things with her nipples)

  HE (does things he knows she loves with her nipples)

  SHE (loves what he’s doing with her nipples)

  SHE (hates him because he’s doing things with her nipples that she loves)

  SHE (has to lean against the wall)

  SHE (has to close her eyes)

  SHE (has to touch his hair)

  HIS HAIR (is so soft)

  HE (kisses her on the neck)

  SHE (becomes a weak-willed wretch)

  SHE (a weak-willed wretch, pulls down his trousers)

  SHE (a weak-willed wretch, wants him on the spot)

  HE (puts the weak-willed wretch’s knees over his shoulders)

  SHE (stretches her arms out)

  HE (lowers his head)

  SHE (lifts her head)

  HE AND SHE (do it, with their heads just touching)

  SHE

  HE

  HEH

  SHHE

  SHH

  EHH

  HEH

  EHE

  EES

  SHHE

  SHE (has an orgasm totally against her will)

  HE (waits until she’s stopped quaking)

  HE (flips her over onto her stomach)

  OUTSIDE (rain and sirens in an almost besotted confusion)

  RAIN AND SIRENS: ssshhh neenawneenaw sssshhhh neenawneenaw sssssshhhhhhneenaneenaw-ssssshhhhh neenawneenaw

  AS (a parallel with what we have just been through)

  AS (in another universe where the total fusion between two elements can be achieved)

  WHICH (is in fact in this universe)

  IN PRINCIPLE (too longed-for and fantastic to be true)

  BUT (still)

  Meanwhile, on Another Planet

  DIX24 is sitting at the kitchen table when PUZ32 slides into the room. DIX24 is so beautiful you could die, thinks PUZ32, how, she thinks, hiding her head in her hands, can one hurt something or someone so beautiful as much as she has to do? DIX24 looks at her astonished, then a Polaroid picture slips out of his head, he takes it out and hands it to her, it’s a picture of PUZ32 as she is standing now, with her hands around her head. Then he pulls out another picture, which is blank, but with this symbol: “?” PUZ32 shakes her head. Then she pulls out a photograph. It is of PUZ32, naked, against the same kitchen table, with DIX27 behind her. DIX24 slides back from the chair while he stares at the photograph that slowly dissolves in front of his eyes. PUZ32’s heart is hammering. Then she pulls out a picture of a small fetus. It’s so beautiful. It’s so small and the light around it is so red. It’s sucking its thumb. It looks like it’s dreaming. It’s impossible to know about what. DIX24 closes his eyes, because it hurts! He is both furious and completely lost. He pulls a picture out of his head: DIX24 and PUZ32 eating hot dogs by a hot dog stand. PUZ32 opening her mouth around an enormous sausage with far too much onion. DIX24 is laughing. Another picture: DIX24 has won a pink teddy bear for PUZ32 and PUZ32 is hugging it. Another picture: DIX24 and PUZ32 walking hand in hand on the sand, the sun is setting and they are not wearing shoes. PUZ32’s heart is about to break. She pulls out a picture that shows that her heart is about to break. But DIX24 doesn’t see it. He’s sitting with his eyes closed. He pulls out a picture that shows a water surface. He sits for a while. Then he pulls out another picture: a big bubble is about to break onto the surface of the water. PUZ32 throws herself at the picture in an attempt to dive into it, but too late, it dissolves, she shakes DIX24, but he has disappeared into himself.

  * * *

  What can we learn from this? That impossible situations can arise on other planets too. We don’t need to think that we’re the only ones who struggle and fight. Another striking feature is that they communicate through pictures.

  Vitalie Meets an Officer

  Oh, biographies! Anna Bae the Younger loved them. She loved the sentences in them. The way the sentences presented themselves as if what they said had actually happened. They were able to compress enormous timelines and state that it was like this or that, and that this is how this links to that. Right now she was reading a biography of the writer Arthur Rimbaud. She liked Rimbaud better than any other writer. Everything he said and did and wrote was rebellious! She would also dearly love to shout “fuck!” in the face of everything. She would also love to run away from home again and again.

  * * *

  She was sitting reading on a sofa that was green. She ran her hand over the fabric, it was an old sofa with a complicated pattern of flowers and leaves, and the flowers and leaves were in raised shiny velvet. It was uneven, and it felt good to run her hand over it. She, Anna Bae, was the third leaf, she thought as she sat there on the sofa and str
oked her hand over the fabric, and looked at her hand, it was almost identical to her mother’s hand, and as far as she could remember, that was almost identical with her mother’s mother’s hand. It was as if this hand lived its own life, it had moved down through the generations so it could continue to stroke the uneven, good-to-touch velvet on the sofa. As she stroked with her hand, which she no longer felt was a part of her, but felt more and more like some strange creature that was rubbing up against the velvet, against the sofa, she read about Rimbaud’s mother, who was called Vitalie: “Although Vitalie’s social life was confined to the church, shopping, and occasional games of whist, she somehow managed to meet a French army officer in 1852,” and she threw herself back in delight:

  * * *

  SOMEHOW SHE MANAGED IT!

  * * *

  Sometimes when you read, it’s like certain sentences strike home and knock you flat. It’s as if they say everything you have tried to say, or tried to do, or everything you are. As a rule, what you are is one simmering, endless longing. And that was how this sentence struck Anna Bae’s consciousness, like a quivering arrow of truth. That said: it’s possible. To meet a French army officer. Or simply to manage whatever it is you are longing for. That seems impossible to manage. That blankets you like destiny. It would seem that Anna Bae’s destiny was to be the third leaf, Anna Bae who was sitting on the same old sofa, stroking the hand that no one had managed to dispense with over the sofa that had been there for three generations. Her destiny was to be here, to live in this house, to walk in the fields outside the house, to gather the sheep from the mountain, never to go deeper into civilization than the hill down to the shop, and certainly never to talk to anyone other than the two neighbors who lived on the farms closest by. To buy books on the Internet. Her destiny was to be filled with a simmering, endless longing. That was her destiny, unfortunately! But Vitalie managed, all the same. One might wonder how. Anna had to ponder how, because of the way it was written, and nothing more was said. In one way or another, she had managed (this confined soul) to meet an officer. In 1852. She had just read that Vitalie Cuif, from the age of five, had been a mother to her two brothers and wife to her suddenly widowed father, that she sacrificed everything for the family until the age of twenty-seven, by which time she had become a bony, prim woman with scraped-back hair. Not a particularly promising starting point for meeting someone. But then she met this officer, somehow. And as a result, she gave birth to Arthur Rimbaud. Before the officer left the family when Arthur was six. Scraped-back hair! Anna, twenty-six, loosened her hair, which was pulled back into a ponytail, leaned back on the green sofa and, while stroking her hand over the uneven, good-to-touch pattern, came to the conclusion that the meeting between Vitalie and the officer could only have happened in the following way: