Novel 11, Book 18

by Dag Solstad

  But then Bjørn Hansen could have confronted him with the fact that the other students refused, after all, to have anything to do with him if they could avoid it. He could have mentioned the episode when Peter had driven a few of them to and from Oslo and how they had ridiculed him for being brazen enough to demand that they should club together on the petrol, as if they were a bunch of friends who had gone to Oslo together. That, too, Peter could have answered: ‘OK, it’s true, that originally they hadn’t meant to take me along. And that they became interested only when I mentioned that I could borrow your car. But so what? It’s often that way in life. You have to use the means at your disposal. I used your car and offered to drive them. Does that mean I’m a “hanger-on”? Maybe, but I felt like being a “hanger-on”. Still, I won’t put up with anything whatsoever just because I have to be a hanger-on and wouldn’t get asked otherwise. One day I will be asked in another way. But while I wait for that, they damn well have to put up with paying for the petrol.’ That is how he imagined Peter might have answered, loudly and preachily. He was enlightening his father about perfectly natural ways of behaving in a given situation, it was as simple as that. Yes, Peter could have explained everything, pointing out that it was an episode experienced in his own times by a young man who, entirely unaffected, shook it off and carried on. The only question that Bjørn Hansen was unable to imagine Peter giving an answer to was 12.35.

  In a way it was almost a relief, for the answers he put into Peter’s mouth chimed all too well with the way Peter was, so that his son’s reticence, aloofness and, yes, embarrassment at being confronted every Saturday with having to let himself into the flat and stealing through the living room without waking his father or, if his father awoke all the same, Peter knowing for certain that it was, after all, well past midnight, reconciled Bjørn in some way to his own son. His despair at his son being disliked and rejected by his peers was then countered by Peter’s embarrassment at having been exposed in his freezing loneliness, and this led to a reconciliation with his own son which he otherwise had difficulty achieving – well, even here he achieved it only in his imagination, indeed, at the extreme edge of his imagination.

  For he was not certain that he liked his only son, that is, the only thing that would be left after him, in the end. Though he was in despair about Peter’s incurable loneliness, which only expressed itself in his son’s stolen steps across the living-room floor at 12.35 every Saturday night, he understood all too well its cause. He couldn’t endure his son’s preachy and boastful manner. It revolted him, although what Peter expressed in this way was his enthusiasm for his own times, which Bjørn had to allow him, of course, in addition to the fact that it showed his son was prepared to fight hard for the life that was, after all, his own, chillingly his own, Bjørn Hansen might add. It was Peter’s spark of life that manifested itself in this way, what would be left after him, that is, in his own flesh and blood, in the genes, which would blindly push on, in as yet unborn lives. But there was something about this spark of life that frightened him. A sneaky air Peter had. In his relationship with his father. As if he were constantly saying, ‘Don’t even try! You can’t buy me back as your son, in this house I’m a tenant and you’re my landlord.’ There was a distance in everything Peter did which expressed this. Nevertheless, he could not resist the temptation to gain advantage from being Bjørn Hansen’s only son, and in such a way that Bjørn felt certain Peter crowed over it among his fellow students. He was afraid he might offend his son by acting in such a way that Peter was bound to perceive it as an overture to him in his capacity as a father. Make him feel irritated or troubled. There were so many things he would have given him, but held back because he feared Peter would interpret it as pressure to make him come out as a ‘son’. That underhanded air of his every time he accepted something, like his meals, which his father had arranged so that he could eat without having to play the role of ‘son’, suggested a strong, distinctive spark of life in him, which Bjørn nevertheless could never quite resign himself to, because it was without generosity (But how many young men are generous? They can only latch on to their own future!) and without a sense of shame (and he expected to find a sense of shame in a young man), which, he had to admit, also manifested itself in another distinct manner, namely, the pushiness that Peter’s fellow students had experienced and tried to bear with, however grudgingly. Peter was going to be an optician. He spoke about the high level of competency placed at one’s disposal by the Kongsberg Engineering College in this field, as though it were a prize he had pocketed on account of his ability. But the subject itself occupied him very little. He was only mildly interested in optical science, which was, after all, what he was here to learn about. He regarded it as pretty much the price he had to pay to get an education with a future. Bjørn had wondered why Peter, with his good marks, hadn’t looked for another field of study, choosing to become a doctor or an engineer, but that was clearly far from his mind, he showed no ambition at all in that direction. Algot did not explain everything, for if Peter had joined the army with a clear ambition to be a physician, an engineer or a lawyer, even Algot could not have made him choose to be an optician instead. It had been media versus optics, and there Peter had, to his own crowing satisfaction, chosen correctly, namely optics. This decision might seem rather questionable to outsiders, and Peter’s own cocksureness all but incomprehensible. After all, media means power. The new breed of visual and literary scholars, who by virtue of their knowledge can exploit the secret language of the TV screen must, after all, have had a seductive effect on Peter. Nonetheless, he chose to be an optician. To remedy the weaknesses of the eye with the help of optical science. It was unthinkable that he would have made this choice without Algot’s influence, but the strange thing was that he had made this choice at all. Algot’s influence must have been greater than Peter’s dream of belonging to that select group of modern media experts, with their power and adventurous lifestyles, as opposed to the rather sedentary life in the back room of an optician’s shop, albeit dressed in a white smock. But there, in the back room of the optician’s shop, Peter Korpi Hansen was to leave his imprint on existence, as someone who fully understood it. That was his goal. Algot did not come. Optics as a subject was of little interest to Peter. He could have left. The premises for his remaining weren’t there, after all. But he remained. His classmates disliked him, just barely tolerated that he sat down at their table in the canteen. But in the evening he would sit and talk enthusiastically to his father about Kongsberg Engineering College, about its wonderful student life, the pulse of the times, visiting lecturers who came from NIT and were at their beck and call, and about his great fellow students, among whom Åke Svensson from Arvika, in particular, stood high in his favour. For Peter had found his niche. He had found the means by which he would put his own stamp on existence.

  According to Peter it was Åke, the Swede, who had suggested the idea to him. ‘Here we are, forty of us,’ he had said, ‘and, afterwards, which one do the customers prefer? The best one, naturally. But we are all the best, from the customer’s viewpoint. After three years here we can all do the technical part of the job to the full satisfaction of the customer. We’ve all learned that much. After all, every one of us can find the correct lens for any eye whatsoever and can identify those who have diseased eyes and send them to an oculist. Even those of us who slept in class when the eye specialist was here will have picked up enough to enable them to distinguish a diseased eye from one which simply has impaired vision. Our domain is the eye with impaired vision, and everyone will be able to provide the correct eyeglass or lens for it. For those whom we shall serve, we will all be equally capable. That one is better than another is obvious only to opticians. All the same the customers will prefer one optician to another. Some will be successful, others will struggle. Who will be a success when, in reality, we are all equally capable? The one who can offer something different, of course. The one who can offer beauty,’ Åke said. ‘The fa
shionable pair of glasses.’

  This had made an enormous impression on Bjørn Hansen’s son, who did not even dream about owning his own optician’s shop, but of being an assistant to Algot Blom, or someone like him. It was by interpreting the whims of fashion that an optician distinguished himself. Applying the whims of fashion quite concretely to a particular pair of glasses. Realising that this was where the future lay for an optician. Peter had understood that. But it was Åke who had given him the idea. For that he would be eternally grateful to Åke Svensson, he said. For his having planted these words in him. Words that Peter hid in his heart and brooded on, for Bjørn Hansen understood that Peter could very well expatiate enthusiastically on what this really meant in the presence of his father, but never when he was in the company of his fellow students. Then he listened and kept quiet. Because now he was at the cutting edge, he had seen what it was all about. He had to learn his métier, of course. But in addition to that, one had to understand the time one lived in. Its whims, which are the innermost essence of time.

  Bjørn Hansen watched his son. He could imagine him as an optician. An assistant in an optician’s. He could not imagine him as a lawyer, doctor, or engineer. Or working in the media, whether in advertising, film, or as a TV presenter. He had found his niche in life. A profession that really meant nothing to him, which he had chosen by chance and on the assumption that it assured his future, because there were few opticians in relation to the demand, as opposed to the media where too many are called. His son as an optician. As he comes up with the right pair of glasses for his client. Displaying a gloating pride as he plunges his hand straight into his own time and in an almost mysterious way pulls out a pair of glasses that is perfectly adapted to the shape of the client’s face, viewed in the light of the time’s changing expressiveness or staunch conformity. This was not only his son, but it was his son’s dream and the quivering goal of his existence.

  It was clear that the idea he had picked up from Åke, the Swede, released something in Peter. It could not be denied that he had studied at random, because the foundation of his efforts had vanished before he had begun. He had read diligently, that’s true, but without any special purpose. Apart, perhaps, from a hope, far back in his head, that a letter would arrive from Algot in which everything would be explained and remedied. He had read to kill time. But now he could look ahead to the day when he had finished his studies, in two and a half years, and a future that was no longer dependent on a friend who had betrayed him in such an incomprehensible way. He was as lonely as before, but showed it less, except, of course, at the hour when loneliness struck, between 11.30 and 12.35, when he understood that he had once again been de trop among his peers, one must assume.

  The end of the autumn term was approaching, Peter would soon be going home, to Narvik, for Christmas. Since they shared the flat, Bjørn had discovered what it felt like to have a modern young man living with him. For example, from the bathroom being occupied when he had to use it. And from the fact that the scent from his son’s perfumes, body lotion, aftershave, stick deodorant and shampoo hovered in the air when at last he could go in there, drowning out the more primitive smell from his son’s insides, which was only imperceptibly present, like an evaporated, unidentifiable token of his son’s hairy presence. Bjørn saw him leave in the morning, nonchalant, self-assured, dressed for battle in the very costume of youth. And come back in the evening, or in the late afternoon, and warm up the dinner in the microwave that Bjørn Hansen had bought in preparation for his son coming to live with him. Then Peter went to his own room to study, or perhaps rest. But he came out into the living room again, sat down on the sofa and talked. About his pet subject. He took pleasure in putting down the other students. Those who failed to understand that opticians should take part in the general enlightenment of the masses. Those who thought the only important thing was to acquire some elementary knowledge about the relationship between the shape of a person’s face and the chosen frame and lenses. He didn’t even refrain from putting down Åke. Åke who had given him the idea, but had failed to understand the substance of what he himself had said. He had taken it to be a stray thought, an amusing detail to be trifled with, though half in earnest. But not in deadly earnest. Like Peter. ‘Huge lenses for a woman with a long face,’ he said, laughing. ‘That’s obvious. For then the woman’s face becomes soft. They think all they have to do is to learn such elementary rules. But what if the woman’s face doesn’t need to be soft? Doesn’t this softness expected of women seem a trifle banal? After all, emphasising the hardness of a woman’s long face might make it sparkle in a mysterious, provocative way. Pure and hard. Square specs, with low lenses, for her.’ The direct opposite, in fact, of what was taught, which his fellow students took to be eternal truths. ‘There are no eternal truths, only a hectic rhythm of life, situations in which people have a chance to shine, so that the situation is the firmament and the perfect people its stars,’ Peter said solemnly and with great and genuine pathos. Oh, if only his son could have spoken with such emotion about optical science instead! About the knowledge which would enable him to work with the lens’s curvatures to arrive at –2.5 and –1.7. This scanty knowledge, however, could not raise his son’s mind to the great heights and prepare his encounter with real life. And that was what Peter was now talking about, preaching about, to his father. Preaching and preaching. About life and his own future, to which his eyes had now been opened. Before it had only been life, the admirable life of his own times. Now he also knew how he would function within it. His eyes had been opened. He talked and talked. In the same monotonous, all too loud voice. Over his father’s head, but straight in his ears. Bjørn got an earful. The whole thing had developed very differently to the way he had imagined. Bjørn Hansen had been waiting all through autumn for Peter to ‘attack’ him. Why had he abandoned his only son when he was just two years old? Didn’t he know it meant that a whole facet of existence had been lost to him, the son? Bjørn also waited for Peter to tell him that he hadn’t visited him since he was fourteen years old because he had expected his father to reveal himself and ask him, urgently, to come down anyway, since he couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. But Peter never made any such ‘attack’ on him. Not with a word did he refer to what had been between them. Not with a word, not with a look did he hint at anything that could have turned Peter into Bjørn Hansen’s ‘son’, and Bjørn, consequently, into Peter’s ‘father’. The ‘attack’ never came. But Bjørn Hansen had been waiting. He had prepared his answer. That he regretted nothing, and therefore couldn’t make any overture that might turn him into Peter’s ‘father’ and, accordingly, Peter into his own ‘son’. For he couldn’t make use of the word ‘regret’, knowing that he would have acted exactly the same if given a second chance. With that he had lost his son, and Peter was the only one who could remedy the situation, if he wanted to. But Peter did not. He had no idea what his father was talking about. He couldn’t care less about the whole thing. Instead, Peter talked about the enthusiasm he felt for his own brilliant epoch and its enlightened people, to which he was fully entitled. There was a curse on the relationship between father and son. Evening after evening, the lonely young man preached to his father about life out there, in the future. With his naked young face, which had Bjørn Hansen’s own features, Peter explained self-confidently how he would fix the future. How he would get so close to it, so close that he could grasp it, from the modest fancied position he occupied as trusted manager of Algot Blom’s main branch in Oslo, or wherever he would end up – it being not at all certain that he would end up at Algot Blom’s, there being so many possibilities. This he could boastfully, for the first time, tell his father, in confidence. Bjørn Hansen was listening. He was rather reserved as he sat there, getting an earful. He only said, ‘You don’t say? – Well – you think so? – Oh really? – That might be worth thinking about.’ But it didn’t affect Peter. He talked and talked. Enthusiastically and monotonously, in his too loud voic
e. Bjørn Hansen wished he would stop. He couldn’t bear to listen to any more testimony about the modern world, to which his son was so proud of belonging heart and soul. With all its stylishness and elegance, which Peter had now latched on to by interpreting the modernity of his own life in such a way that he could create a truly astonishing spectacle frame, one that would make people gasp with admiration. But his son didn’t stop. He talked and talked. In the morning as well, even before Bjørn Hansen was fully awake and had managed to prepare himself for another day, his son would stand at the pull-out breadboard by the worktop cutting his slices of bread, while talking boastfully about the pulse of the age to which he belonged and the importance of understanding it. ‘With his obscenely naked face’, ‘like your spitting image’, rigged out in a costume from his plentiful and label-laden wardrobe, he stood there, self-assured and self-indulgent, preaching to Bjørn Hansen about the superiority of his own times, which he was a part of, not apart from, before he took his cup of coffee and his slices of bread and went into his own room, so that his father could finally settle down and have breakfast in peace and quiet. At the same time Bjørn felt a stab of bad conscience.

  For perhaps I misunderstand it all, he thought. Perhaps this is a communication from a ‘son’. Perhaps this is ‘the voice of the son’. A young man who opens his heart to his father about the journey he has set out on and the adventures that await him out there. A message, that is, which he brings from out there, to his father. If that was the case, did his voice signify that the one who opened his heart was his father’s heir, the one who would carry life onwards? Was Peter letting him know how he would seize the torch? Possibly, possibly. However preachy his manner, it was perhaps a ‘son’ who spoke, far away, but still perhaps a ‘son’. Who spoke to him. Who tried to reach him, as a son. Bjørn Hansen felt moved, and uneasy. For was there not in this communication also – if it really did come from his ‘son’, – a tacit enquiry, well, a secret hope, that his father, far down there, had to offer him his recognition? A small spark? Which was to be kindled between the two of them? Was it possible that Peter had done so? Something Peter certainly could do, but which he himself had forfeited the possibility of doing. Was he trying to make himself known now? Not in the form of an ‘attack’, which he had waited for and waited for several months on end, but in this highly surprising way? Suddenly it dawned on Bjørn Hansen that his son, who had talked and talked in his preachy fashion, self-confidently and boastfully, and in a patronising tone, had perhaps really been saying all the time, again and again, ‘Say something to me, Dad. Recognise me for what I am, recognise the life I’m going to live and that I’m preparing myself for. Do that, Dad.’ Could it be possible that he had a son who for several months, from the very moment he had come to Kongsberg and settled in as a guest in his father’s flat, had asked, time and again, for a word of recognition? Yes, it was possible. Was this really a ‘son’ who was trying to call attention to his own life and his life’s purpose, in order to get recognition from his ‘father’? Astonished, Bjørn Hansen had to admit that one could not discount that possibility. And if that were the case, then he could, by giving this recognition, become Peter’s father in Peter’s own eyes and consequently be reunited with his son. He could say the redeeming word, with the result that the curse that stood between them would lose its efficacy. But even if this were the case, it was nevertheless no use. It could just as well be the exact opposite. For he could not give Peter this recognition. It was that simple and shocking. Peter could only talk and talk. And continue to preach at him, in his too loud voice, which changed nothing. My poor orphan son, he thought.