So Long, Marianne

by Kari Hesthamar

  Marianne was in love, but being with Axel also made her insecure. They were so dissimilar; he was intense and loquacious, Marianne mild and unassuming. Axel was learned and intellectual, whereas she had stumbled into a universe of ideas that was completely alien to her. Feeling inadequate, she ploughed through the books that Axel prescribed for her — books he said would liberate her from the rules and norms of family and society and show her the way to her inner self.

  Her parents were not unlike other parents in the 1950s, but Axel, who had come from a broken home, thought they were stiflingly conservative and strict. He took books to Marianne and jotted down titles of works he claimed would introduce her to ideas different from the middle-class notions that weighed her down. And Marianne read. Ouspensky, Nietzsche, Jung. She read page after page — she read just for the sake of reading. Word after word after word, but it wasn’t her language and it didn’t grab her the way it did Axel. The books didn’t make the same profound impression on her as they did on him. There weren’t many others in their circle of friends who read them either, but for Marianne understanding Axel became an obsession. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was, but something in him resonated deeply within her. If the books and words became meaningful for her, would she gain a more equal footing with Axel?

  Axel stood out from everyone Marianne knew. He wanted to be a writer and strike out in the world. He was his own man, liberated in a way she had never before encountered, always searching within himself.

  The Theatre Café was their favourite haunt. Speaking with profound engagement about names such as Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Jung and John Starr Cooke, Axel was the focal point of the table. Marianne listened and did her best to follow his soaring ideas. Sheer nervousness about not being able to keep up sometimes gave her migraines, occasionally sending her on a dash to the cellar to vomit in the toilet. On the first floor Axel sat and pontificated about philosophy. Their friends laughed and said, “Now Axel is way out in the Andromeda Galaxy again.”

  * * *

  Axel had completed three years of high school in Frogner and wanted to enter university. But his encounter with the university was an affair that lasted just two or three days. Attending Arne Næss’s lectures about preparing for entrance examinations, Axel found himself in a hall full of people who sat quietly and politely raised their hands. That was not his style. He decided to abandon the whole thing and instead do what his father had always thought was best: enter the family business and begin as an apprentice sausage-maker.

  Axel shifted tins and lugged heavy sacks of salt, washed intestines and delivered products to restaurants. On one of the many uninspiring days in the steamy kitchen on Torg Street his clogs slipped on some innards and he skidded down the stairs to the cellar, where the carcasses were hanging. Landing with a bang at the bottom of the steps, he took it as a sign that enough was enough. He put an end to his sausage-making career that day.

  Axel took up odd jobs again to make ends meet, writing in his free time. Marianne knew that he wanted to leave Norway. Oslo was like an old record spinning around and around and she also hankered to leave. Axel had a couple of pieces published in the newspaper Aftenposten, and sent in short stories to various magazines and journals. Most were rejected. On May 16, 1955, the short story “Yama” was politely but firmly returned from Johan Borgen, editor at the literary magazine Vinduet. Borgen wrote that “the mythic form rather obscures the message.”

  Several lengthier manuscripts were rejected, but in 1955, the year after he and Marianne had met, Axel debuted with his self-published book Dyretemmerens Kors (The Cross of the Animal Tamer). He had begun working on the surrealistic story when he was on his great journey through the desert and was living among the Tuareg people, where the men were veiled and barefoot. He arrived as a white man in a pith helmet and salmon-coloured boots, afraid of being bitten by scorpions and snakes. He eventually discarded the tropical helmet and acquired a burnoose and a donkey. He constructed a shelter of rocks and made a desk from a block of stone.2

  Dyretemmerens Kors had the following foreword:

  How many people live in harmony with their inner myth? How many have some real experience that humdrum everyday life is the result of life’s endless work with its organic material? How many are aware of the secretive symbolic language that their actions express? Who can read themselves between the lines? The answer must be very, very few. And precisely here lies the sinister sickness that is eating away at civilization, a creeping paralysis of the core of consciousness.

  Axel went around to the newspaper editors in Oslo and enthused about his little book. He spoke passionately about dream symbolism, depth psychology and the unconscious, about Jung’s analytical psychology and the relevance of Eastern thought for the Western individual. He was also very preoccupied with texts such as The Book of Revelations, The Tibetan Book of the Dead and the I Ching (Book of Changes).

  Marianne went to her father’s law office and tried to drum up sales among the staff. Axel peddled the novel at the slaughterhouse cooperative and to sausage-makers at his grandfather’s factory. Together they traipsed around the Theatre Café and the Artists House gallery and sold the book to friends and acquaintances. The newspaper Nationen was one of the few to devote column space to it:

  Axel Jensen does not write for a popular audience, and his mystical language will probably not be understood or appreciated by many. But considered as an experiment the book is interesting, and it is a pleasure to meet a young author who is not following the herd.3

  According to Axel no one had an inkling of what his book was about and in the end he burned the remaining copies.

  * * *

  Marianne seldom invited Axel or other friends home. She didn’t want to introduce her friends to her parents, believing they weren’t classy or intellectual enough for her social circle. Her brother, six years her junior, had gone through long periods of illness and was too young for them to have much in common. Her parents’ troubled relationship cast a pall over the atmosphere in their home. They weren’t pleased to have young people drifting in and out of the house, and Marianne quarrelled continually with her father. They clashed over curfew, homework and her choice of boyfriend. At the age of twenty, Marianne wasn’t permitted to spend the Easter holiday with Axel and their friends at a mountain cabin. When Marianne’s friends intervened on her behalf, her father remained adamant that only sluts went off like that. Her parents made Marianne think of the guards at the entrance to the royal palace; she imagined that they wore armour that shielded their hearts.

  Axel was then living with his father in a part of Oslo known as Nordberg. Axel’s father was remarried to a younger woman, and Axel had two young half-brothers. Axel wasn’t on the best of terms with his father, who constantly reminded him that he lacked a job and his own place to live. In spite of that, it was more peaceful there than at Marianne’s home. Axel had made a small den for himself in the house. He hung a red scarf across the window and lit a flickering candle for Marianne.

  At the office in the morning, Marianne drew an arrow-pierced heart, inscribed “A + M” and accompanied by a greeting to her sleeping boyfriend:

  Yes, now your little wife is sitting at the office, plinking at the typewriter and thinking only of you. I love you more than anything on Earth, Venus, Jupiter, Mars, Saturn and all the worlds that don’t exist. Take a good stretch and go into the bathroom, in the pocket of your new suit there’s a little breakfast: buy fresh rolls, 1/3 of a litre of milk and something inspiring to put on the bread. Then wash your shirts until they’re snow white and hang them to dry in the sunshine. Then you can do whatever you like, as long as you don’t forget me for a single moment all day. I’ll call you at 12:30 (or 1).

  Marianne had become part of Axel’s group of friends, and when they could afford it they went to the Theatre Café and ate sandwiches and pickled herring for the cheap price of 75 øre. But as a rule they met at someon
e’s home every Saturday to share a bottle of Golden Cock gin mixed with orange juice and play jazz records.

  Axel often became aggressive when he drank. Insisting on telling everyone how the world really worked, he wound up in heated arguments and fistfights. When she drank, Marianne felt that the alcohol freed her from herself — she just wanted to dance and disappear from herself and Axel’s whims. She was good at pushing troublesome matters aside, and dancing made her feel weightless and happy.

  Men noticed her and she knew that Axel was aware of it. But Axel didn’t look upon her as merely a woman, as many other men did. He was convinced that the two of them could become something together. She too believed that. Axel wasn’t frivolous: he wanted to lift her out of her prosaic existence and set her free — free just to be, without needing justification. But it wasn’t easy to let one’s light shine before others.

  Sunday was the only day off work during the week, so Saturday was the big night for getting together. Three of their friends had single mothers and it was always open house at their homes. One of these belonged to Axel’s friend Lasse, who lived on Bygdøy Peninsula. The house was called Bop Island, and would later become the model for the villa in Axel’s book A Girl I Knew. Lasse was a considerate and dashing young man whom all the girls fell for, and his basement pad at the house was well suited for parties and the latest jazz.

  * * *

  It’s one of many parties in the basement on Bygdøy. The talk is loud. People are dancing. Drinking. Discussing.

  Nauseated and her vision blurring, Marianne feels the migraine pressing behind her eyes that comes when Axel philosophizes. Lasse escorts her up to the first floor, where his mother is, while the other young people continue the party in the basement. He shows her into a bedroom where she can lie down. Marianne curls up on the bed and rests her eyes. She is barely aware of the distant sound of the party down below.

  Soon afterward she awakens with a jerk when the door is flung open and a drunken Axel barges into the room. He says nothing, just yanks her off the bed and hauls her by the arm into the kitchen. He looks at Marianne, lays his palm on the kitchen table, grabs a knife and drives it into his hand. Marianne hears the sound of the knife penetrating his flesh and bones. She closes her eyes. She hears the sound of the knife again. Twice. Three times. Sitting on a kitchen chair with her eyes closed, she hears loud voices in the room. This isn’t happening, she thinks.

  The blood flows. Someone fetches a towel and wraps it around Axel’s hand. Marianne is sent home in a taxi, and Axel is tended by his friends.

  Marianne was frightened by the incident but didn’t talk to Axel about what had happened. She thought that if it could be just the two of them then all this would stop: Axel would settle down and the craziness would ebb away. But she would come to think of that small drama at the kitchen table on Bygdøy Peninsula many times later in life. She would replay the scene in her mind over and over again, asking herself why. Jealousy? She had more than once wondered if he was mad, this man she was with. He shaped her understanding of love, and on good days there was no other place she would rather be than with him. On these days anything was possible. But then came the times when he was volatile and bubbling with ideas that frightened her. Moments when he had a wild look in his eyes.

  * * *

  Axel used most of the day to write, going on short trips to work — his typewriter always in his suitcase. When he was away he wrote letters to Marianne about how he loved her and how she had to come quickly to him, or he to her. He sailed in regattas with his father’s boat and loved to be on the sea. The buzz that sailing gave him was matched only by jazz.

  In the summer of 1955 he went to the French Riviera to sail with Lasse. Marianne was in Oslo and received a series of longing letters. A small clover peeped green at her when she opened an envelope postmarked in the south of France:

  JUAN LES PINS 3/8 – 55

  Little one! Good one! Beloved!

  The sun is baking, the waves are rolling and I love you. Today Lasse and I went out and sailed in the snipe, enjoying ourselves on the most gorgeous beach, with comfortable mats and the Mediterranean foaming under the soles of my feet. There’s a great wind, and I love only, only you.

  I’ve never been more disappointed than I was in Miel when there was no letter from you. I just hope you haven’t changed your mind, that you’ve found your Superman that you’ve always been going around dreaming about. I want so much to be your Superman, to be your Mofschen, I want to hold you in my arms and kiss your eyes …

  You must always love me, Marianne, never leave me. Perhaps we are among the few who can really be good together. We’ve fought, been crazy with jealousy and devilry, and always found our way back to each other — and that’s where it’s wonderful to be …

  Darling, darling, Marianne. My yearning for you is indescribable. I often imagine that it’s the two of us who are here in the Mediterranean. But the time will come. The whole future lies before us.4

  Marianne was twenty years old and didn’t know how right he was. She went to her job every day, happy to get out of the house. Her parents were terrified that she would fall pregnant by Axel, and for Marianne her home felt like a prison.

  In spite of his declarations of love, Axel’s feelings were unpredictable. He was impulsive and pursued his ideas in all directions. She hung back, or else tried to keep up, but both tactics were difficult. When she told him once that she was neither his mother nor his aunt, Axel retorted that he’d had more than enough of mothers and aunts in his life — he only needed Marianne. Full stop. Beautiful Marianne with her restless and imaginative mind.

  Marianne had always had a rich fantasy life. She immersed herself deeply in her daydreams, imagining herself in scenarios ranging from film roles to the huge wedding she and Axel would have, attended by hundreds of guests. She shared her daydreams and night dreams with Axel, who listened with keen interest. When he was away, she wrote him letters with accounts of what had come to her in her sleep. A book in a display window. Rita Hayworth’s typewriter. An argument with her father.

  She had long wished to create something herself, and she fantasized about standing on the stage, where she could put herself in someone else’s place and live out that role in front of an audience. When she was small, Momo told her a story about how she once travelled all the way to China to marry an ambassador. The journey by sea took many weeks and when she arrived the young man had died. He had been run down by a horse and carriage, but her grandmother stayed in China for several months.

  Marianne had listened to the dramatic tales with round eyes. She had lived with Momo for most of the war, and on cold winter nights they had shared a bed. Momo always spread Marianne’s clothes under her so they would be nice and warm when they arose in the morning. Sometimes they just lay there, the new person and the old one, listening to the wood crackling in the iron stove and sharing what they could remember of their dreams from the night.

  Now Marianne had turned twenty-two, and she wished she could go to her grandmother for advice. Momo had died shortly after Marianne had met Axel so she sought out her mother’s cousin, an actress who had helped establish the National Academy of Theatre in Oslo. Marianne read Ibsen’s The Wild Duck with her until tears ran down her face. She studied the role of Hedvig and after rehearsing the part she decided, with the support of her mother’s cousin, to take the academy’s entrance examination — to her parents’ intense despair.

  Beset by resistance at home, Marianne lost her nerve and in the end didn’t take the exam.

  THE RIGHT PATH

  Marianne often told Axel that she was afraid of being alone, always apprehensive that he would abandon her because she wasn’t interesting enough for him. Her fear intrigued him and he reminded her of it incessantly:

  The fear of being alone is a foretaste of what lies beneath that youthful fragrant wonderfulness. The angst is within you, and you shou
ld tend it. Behind it lies buried something substantial, you can be sure of that. I know that these bugbears of which I so often speak tend to irritate you. But your irritation tells me that you are still inexperienced. Find the sun behind the angst. We will eventually have a language in common. Later we will speak more of the same language.5

  Axel wanted Marianne to seize hold of what she dreaded and hold it up to the light. In this way she would more easily achieve self-realization and liberate the powers within her.

  I am so certain that something creative dwells within you. Every person should create something. We are here on this Earth not to sleep but to create. The act of creation is the most important in life and when all is said and done it is the only thing that gives existence some kind of meaning. To create is to see one’s own being deposited in the things outside of ourselves. When you create you share yourself with other human beings. He who does not create is self-contained. He encapsulates himself, congeals. What is life for an eating, shitting and sleeping animal? Life has given us a brain and senses to use for something! To create! And YOU! You can CREATE!

  It’s just a matter of finding a form of expression. Energy and strength are boiling within you, searching for a form. Those dreams of yours, my God. I’ve been saying for a long time that a creative power lives within you. It’s not a question of world fame. The joy is in the act of creation itself. It’s a true joy, Marianne.

  I write because I must. Without creating existence loses all meaning. I write because I must release my mind of something that is pressing to come out … My self is my only motive. I love you, Marianne. I could do everything for you. But you must live your own life. I can’t live your life for you. I can’t create for you either. You must work all this out for yourself. One can’t do anything for someone else. One can’t know what is best for another person, deep down. How would one know? One doesn’t even know oneself.6