by Dag Solstad
Only after midnight did Johan Corneliussen accept Elias Rukla’s desire to withdraw, leaving the loving couple to themselves. Getting up from his armchair, he remarked on the lateness of the hour and said he had to turn out early the next morning, also that he had better not drink any more wine tonight. Johan Corneliussen and Eva got up too, from the sofa, and walked him out into the common hallway. Johan and Elias exchanged a few jovial private words, incomprehensible to anyone else, and Eva Linde gave him her hand for goodbye. A firm handshake, but without that ‘extra’ (imploring) pressure she had applied to his hand when they greeted one another for the first time a few hours earlier. He was pleased that she did it that way. A little later he was strolling down Sognsveien, away from the student village to his own apartment in Jacob Aalls gate. He was all wistfulness, reflecting that youth was irretrievably over and that it was about time for him to think of settling down. He felt lonely, although Johan Corneliussen had throughout shown him great generosity in the midst of his happiness and had indirectly used the entire evening to tell him, well, assure him, and her, that their friendship was so precious to him that not even love and its object would get in its way; quite the contrary, Johan Corneliussen had said, it was the object of his love who had to be worked into the friendship. This all-but-stuttering highmindedness on the part of Johan Corneliussen moved him profoundly, but he knew that it was based on a wish rather than reality, because with a woman like Eva Linde as the object of his love, he, Elias Rukla, also understood that cultivating her would swallow all his time, for Johan Corneliussen must be all ablaze now, burning with the fire of a passion that threatened to consume him unless he was continually near the one who fed this fire, so he could see her and be intimate with her, Elias Rukla thought.
He was deeply moved by Johan Corneliussen’s indirect assurances, however unrealistic, vis-à-vis himself, and he felt he owed him something in return. Hence he could get no peace until (after many tries) he managed to get hold of Johan Corneliussen on the telephone the next day. He had been calling him all day on the communal telephone, which he knew was located in the hallway in the group of apartment buildings where he lived in the Sogn student village, but the person who picked up the telephone had told him every time, after Elias had heard him knock on Johan Corneliussen’s door, that he was not home. Only in the early evening did he succeed in reaching him. Then he said, without introduction, What a wonderful woman. I envy you, take good care of her. I think you should marry her. Johan Corneliussen was silent. Then Elias heard him give a laugh, a rather embarrassed laugh, but embarrassed because he was glad. —You don’t say, you don’t say. Huh-huh. —Well, that was all. Cheerio. —Yes, cheerio. Elias hung up.
Now several months went by before he again heard from Johan Corneliussen. When he telephoned, early in the autumn, it was to invite Elias to join in a group project. A three-room apartment at Grorud was to be renovated. He turned up at the appointed time and place, together with ten or twelve others of Johan’s friends. It was a small apartment, cramped and run-down. Johan Corneliussen’s friends renovated it. They plastered and painted, hung wallpaper and put down flooring. Heaps of materials were delivered, always by some private person who had obviously arranged something for Johan. Johan Corneliussen himself was at the centre of the project, organising the whole thing. He snapped his fingers, and up rose a bright, attractive, modern three-room flat in this tower block at Grorud in no time at all. And here Eva Linde was to move in. She did not know anything yet, he was to meet her downtown the same evening and then take her there. Two days later the same ten or twelve friends of Johan Corneliussen’s were again in action. Now they were moving house. First they picked up some belongings at the Sogn student village, then at Eva Linde’s digs on Carl Berner’s Place (Eva was nowhere to be seen), and drove them to Grorud. They carried the things up, and later there arrived delivery trucks from all kinds of obscure ‘firms’, bringing sofas, refrigerator, stove, TV, chairs, tables, curtains, bracket lamps, etc., etc. And they helped carry all of it up and put it in the right places – books in the bookcases, clothes in the wardrobes – they even helped hang the curtains. By evening the apartment was shipshape and ready to be occupied. Then they left, because Eva Linde would be coming at any moment. One week later there was a house-warming party. Then they finally saw Eva Linde. She stood in the hall welcoming the guests, and Elias Rukla (along with his compeers) thought she was as ethereally beautiful as the first time he saw her.
Johan Corneliussen and Eva Linde had moved in together. Into a three-room apartment located in a high-rise building at Grorud. This was the autumn of 1969. They were married around the New Year in 1970, and later the same year their baby daughter, Camilla, was born. In 1972, Johan Corneliussen took his PhD in philosophy, with a dissertation on the relationship between Marx and Kant. For various reasons it did not lead to his obtaining a position, so their economy must be said to have been poor. In 1976, therefore, Johan Corneliussen had apparently had enough, and he left his three-room apartment at Grorud, his still equally beautiful wife, and their six-year-old daughter, Camilla, never to return. Elias Rukla, who during this whole period had been a welcome guest in their home, in his capacity as Johan Corneliussen’s close friend, was given the news by telephone from the Fornebu Airport. Johan told him that he had run away from it all, that he was now standing with an airline ticket to New York in his hand and would land in America within eight hours, in order to seek out a completely different future, and that this time it was not a matter of philosophy.
This did not come as a surprise to Elias at the time, although it was shocking news. Things had come to a standstill for Johan Corneliussen, not the least sign of which was his parting remark to Elias. Dumbfounded, Elias had gathered his wits about him to make a last-ditch appeal to his reason and said, But Eva … and Camilla? Then Johan Corneliussen had said, brusquely, I’m leaving them in your care, and hung up. Elias had been terribly put out, while clearly realising that this remark was part of a pattern. What had gone wrong for Johan?
In 1970, at any rate, there was a close happy family at Grorud. Eva and Johan and the newborn Camilla. In 1972, when Johan took his PhD in philosophy, he was lionised at the Institute of Philosophy, as was to be expected. But then nothing happened. Johan Corneliussen could not get anywhere. There was no vacancy at the Institute. He could have received a large and coveted fellowship at a German university and was urged to apply for it, but he never did. The practical problems were so difficult to deal with, he said, because if Eva and Camilla were to come along, the fellowship was too small, and if he were to go by himself and stay away for a year, maybe two years, no, it wouldn’t work. And so he ended up sticking around, at home, as a half-time research fellow who, in addition, taught a course preparing students for their preliminary examination in philosophy. This gave him, when all the hours were added up, including university courses taught in other towns, away from home, in Kongsberg and Notodden, in Skien, Tønsberg and Fredrikstad, an acceptable annual salary, but no more. As far as Eva’s education was concerned, it was a hit-and-miss affair. Her studies did not amount to much, and the end result was that she took a job as a secretary, full-time as long as Johan was at his busiest working on his PhD dissertation, later generally part-time. It was rather cramped behind the generous and glittering façade, cramped, always cramped, even in 1970, when happiness raised the roof, in a manner of speaking.
All that time, Elias was close to them, as the family friend, and especially Johan’s friend. Every once in a while Johan would call and invite him to Grorud. And Elias Rukla went. Took first the tram from Majorstua to the National Theatre, underground, walked down Karl Johans gate from the National Theatre to Railway Square, where he took the T-bane to Grorud, entered the high-rise building and took the lift up to the ninth floor, where they were expecting him. It seemed to him he was part of everything they ever did. Dined with them, went on rambles with them, took part in the care of the baby (only as an interested spectator, to
be sure), and he also went along, with both or with one of them, to the supermarket, where he insisted on sharing the bill, in return sticking his nose into what was to be purchased. It also happened that he stayed the night, on the living-room sofa. In the wintertime they went skiing in Lillomarka. Eva, Johan (with little Camilla in a reindeer sleigh), and Elias Rukla. Eva attracted enormous attention – the male skiers stopped instantly when she passed by, staring open-mouthed after her. They tried, all three of them, to ignore it, but at times Johan could not refrain from laughing, and so they would all three of them laugh, a bit resignedly, though Elias was unable to imbue his laughter with any authentic resignation, because, after all, he was also dazzled by Eva Linde’s unearthly beauty. He would walk beside her, behind Johan, who was pulling the reindeer sleigh. She saw to it that little Camilla did not have the sun in her face. Elias Rukla saw to it as well, all the while engaging in small talk. He liked the way she talked. Her voice, when she talked, had a certain timbre that came from way inside her vocal cords somewhere, something veiled, something he could not find words for and had never heard before. The attractive young woman searched for words, tasted them, as if asking herself, and not least others, and in this case Elias Rukla, who was walking beside her, behind Johan (who was pulling the reindeer sleigh with the small child), Can I really say this? Now and then she would laugh at something he said, quite exuberantly, which pleased Elias. But he could not say that he ‘knew’ her. No, that he could not say, he knew little or nothing about her, but even so he felt close to her, as a friend, not least in situations like this, where other men stared open-mouthed after her when the three of them, Johan (with Camilla on the sleigh), Eva and he, Elias Rukla, passed them by while skiing in Lillomarka. He experienced her as a beauty that had to be protected, also by him, Johan’s friend. He was thrilled by the way she showed off her face. Which required the greatest thoughtfulness on his part not to say anything wrong, such as describing it in so many words, because he suspected she would not feel flattered but, quite the contrary, be irritated, and so strongly that she would dislike him, maybe even so strongly that she would speak ill of him to Johan Corneliussen. Accordingly, he was very discreet with her, in order not to offend what he assumed to be her fragile beauty. So he was mostly engaging her in conversation, trying to amuse her rather than get to know her. When all was said and done, he associated her beauty with being asleep. In his innermost self he associated Eva Linde’s beauty with sleep. When she showed off her face, as when they went skiing in Lillomarka, it was clear, to be sure, purged of its origin in sleep, but at the same time it had an impersonal aspect, something she obviously could not help and therefore did not like to be remarked upon, he assumed, and so it was right, well, chivalrous, of Johan to laugh resignedly at those lingering glances and also for him, Elias, to join in this resigned laughter as best he could. But her beauty’s home was in the repose of sleep, that was clear to him. Maybe it was because he so often experienced her precisely as being asleep, behind the door to her and Johan’s bedroom in their Grorud apartment. After all, his connection with Eva Linde and Johan Corneliussen was based on the fact that he was Johan Corneliussen’s friend, and Johan Corneliussen’s friend from his bachelor days, when so many of their joint activities consisted of going on the spree together, through thick and thin, one might say, and that their friendship still consisted in going on the spree together, though not to the same extent as before. But Johan often met Elias in town. And, too, after closing time he often invited Elias to come along to Grorud to continue the bender. Then Eva would be asleep behind a closed door facing the living room. While Johan and Elias engaged in discussion and talked together. About life in general (that is to say, philosophy, literature, art, politics, etc., etc., and often with reference to their own lives). As a rule Elias would then stay the night on the living-room sofa, take the tram back to the city early in the morning, and go directly to his first class at Fagerborg. Before he hurried off, Johan had got up, along with little Camilla. Eva was still asleep. Her beauty sleep, he presumed. So that every time he really saw her, say, on Sundays when they went skiing in Lillomarka, she was in Elias’ perception of her enveloped in an aura of sleep. With her soft face, satisfied and soothed by sleep, she belonged to the restfulness of sleep; that was where she came from, though he had never seen her sleep, only known that she was lying behind that closed bedroom door facing the living room, a rectangle clearly separate from the wall, with a doorknob a little below the middle, to the left, which Johan Corneliussen pressed down to let himself in at least once every time they sat like that on the ninth floor of a high-rise building at Grorud till late in the night, closed the door gently behind him, and then, shortly afterwards, came out again, but without saying anything. Johan Corneliussen’s indescribably attractive wife. Johan Corneliussen and Elias Rukla in the living room. Johan Corneliussen going up to the window to look out. The lights below. The four-lane highway, illuminated, and now at night without a single car. The philosopher Johan Corneliussen who taught Elias Rukla so many things. Johan Corneliussen who talked and Elias Rukla who came out with objections, dry comments, trying to display a healthy scepticism towards Johan Corneliussen’s deep-probing thoughts and ideas. They tried to speak in low voices, but now and then they became too excited, and one of them had to intervene and hush the other. But once when Elias hushed Johan Corneliussen in this way, the latter said, It’s not necessary. She isn’t sleeping anyway. She pretends to be asleep, but she’s listening. I’ve caught her repeating conversations we’ve had when supposedly she was fast asleep. This made a strong impression on Elias Rukla. And every time since when he was at Grorud with Johan late at night, drinking and discussing with him, he kept thinking of her lying behind that door, immersed in sleep, enveloped by the soft shell of sleep, but listening. And his heart filled with sadness, because this woman who, lying there in the ambience and posture of sleep, was listening to the voices of her husband and the latter’s friend, voices that, rising, sank into her slumbering consciousness, made Elias Rukla think about his own solitary situation. It must have been in 1974 that Johan Corneliussen suddenly came out with this statement about his young wife listening in her sleep, and Elias Rukla was then a bachelor of thirty-four and had long ago given up the idea of finding a life partner. Actually, he did not mind; he liked to be alone, and one of the reasons why he had always withdrawn from women (after he had asked them for a date and walked them home, at the moment when one usually tries to make an overture, Elias had done the opposite, held out his hand and thanked them for a lovely evening, often to the young lady’s disappointment, he had noticed, though, to be sure, only after he got home) was, in fact, that he was afraid of losing himself by getting involved with someone who, all things considered, was a total stranger, with whom he would have to share everything, and the feeling of being smothered, held tight, which then rose in him, had been so strong that he had decided to live alone, as a bachelor, because that suited him best; but now and then he would be overcome by sadness, a feeling that he suffered from a lack, which not only made him contemptible in the eyes of others, for that he knew he was, but also made him a half-person, insofar as the drive towards ‘the other’ was absent from his life at the age of thirty-four. And so, here he sat on the ninth floor of a high-rise building at Grorud, in his friend’s apartment, together with his friend, knowing he was half a person who would never be whole and feeling overcome with grief at the prospect of never becoming whole, inasmuch as he knew that behind that door lay Johan Corneliussen’s wife, who made Johan Corneliussen whole, listening to her husband’s (and the latter’s friend’s) voice in her slumbering state, and in this way, he thought, I steal into a woman’s slumberous state, as the shadow of Johan Corneliussen that I am. And this he thought without bitterness, as an affirmation of the facts of the case, because these were, after all, the circumstances under which his life was lived, and by and large Elias Rukla thought at that time, in 1974, that he was living as rich a life as one
might reasonably expect to live, with a meaningful job, great personal freedom, and an undiminished intellectual curiosity about life and the scope and limits that life defines for you, not least in a social perspective. And so, soon afterwards, he would take the sheet, duvet cover, and pillowcase that Johan Corneliussen handed him and begin to make a bed for himself on the sofa, preparing to stay the night as so often before, while Johan Corneliussen padded about the apartment, turned out the lights, and checked the electric switches before quietly disappearing into the bedroom, to his still-just-as-attractive wife, Eva Linde.
This was the situation. It was in 1974 that Johan Corneliussen had disclosed that Eva Linde used to listen to their conversations, giving them a different hue than before. Did Elias Rukla love Eva Linde? Did he lie on the sofa outside her and Johan Corneliussen’s bedroom door for seven years waiting for her? No, Elias Rukla could honestly say that this was not so. It was simply unthinkable. He was taken with her, that he would admit, but it was as Johan Corneliussen’s spouse that he was taken with her. She had no value at all for him by herself; that was not only forbidden, it was unthinkable. Had he then suffered from an unthinkable love for her? That was something Elias Rukla could not dismiss out of hand, and it would, if true, explain the twinges he used to feel in certain situations, of sadness, even grief, as well as a state of excitement, like the time when Johan Corneliussen disclosed that Eva Linde was listening to them behind her closed door. So it is not impossible that, between 1969 and 1976, from when he was twenty-eight until he turned thirty-six, when he started his career as senior master at the Fagerborg school in a mood of high expectation, established himself in an apartment of his own in Jacob Aalls gate, tried, albeit somewhat half-heartedly, to find a life partner, not least among his younger colleagues at Fagerborg and other secondary schools, amused himself in his leisure time mixing with old acquaintances from his student days, cultivated and kept up his particularly close friendship with Johan Corneliussen – it is not impossible that, in reality, he was suffering from, and letting his steps be controlled by, an unthinkable love for Eva Linde. But if that was so, no trace of this love can be found anywhere, except possibly for those brief occasional twinges in the course of those seven long years, not even in the rather odd geographical fact that, when Elias Rukla and Johan Corneliussen met in town, they did not follow it up with an evening in Jacob Aalls gate but in remote Grorud, a suburban village a good six miles from downtown Oslo with its restaurants, forcing Elias Rukla to get up at the crack of dawn the next morning and leave in a hurry to get to his job as senior master, whereas if they had ended up in Jacob Aalls gate, Johan Corneliussen could have taken it easy, because he did not have such obligations early the next morning. But it was Johan who insisted that they should go to his place, and that was due to the fact that it was his job to take care of Camilla when she awoke in the morning (so that Eva could sleep), and so he had to get home. Therefore, if they were to continue, it had to be at his place. So it was not the sleeping Eva who tempted Elias Rukla to undertake this rather strange trip to Grorud, but the company of Johan Corneliussen. Nevertheless, Elias Rukla could not dismiss the possibility that he had all along suffered from an unthinkable love of Eva Linde, but, if so, it had not even once been allowed to control his anything but remarkable steps, and if something had not happened that was beyond his control, creating an entirely new situation, he could have lived his whole life, to this day, when this is being written, that is NOW, without his having had the least suspicion that he was suffering from an unthinkable passion, whose source was the gradually rather fading beauty Eva Linde Corneliussen.
