‘By the way, I read Shallow Soil this summer,’ I said. ‘Have you read it?’
‘A long time ago.’
‘Hamsun pays tribute to the businessman in it. He’s young, dynamic, the future of the world and the great hero. He has nothing but contempt for artists. Writers, painters, they’re off the scale. But the man of trade! It’s amusing. Can you understand how contrary the man was!’
‘Mm,’ he said. ‘There’s a section in the biography about when he hits on serving girls. The colophon takes a prudish stand with regard to this issue, or is unable to understand. But in fact Hamsun came from the lowest echelon. That’s what you forget. He was a working-class writer. He came from the poorest of the poor regions. For him serving girls were a rung up the social ladder! It’s impossible to get anything out of Hamsun if you don’t understand that.’
‘He didn’t look back,’ I said. ‘It’s as if his parents weren’t a part of his psychology, if you get what I mean. I’m left with the impression of some old grey people hugging the wall in a room somewhere in northern Norway, so old and grey that you can barely distinguish them from the furniture. And so alien to Hamsun’s later life that they have no relevance at all. But it can’t have been like that.’
‘Can’t it?’
‘Well, I suppose it could, but you know what I mean, don’t you? There isn’t a single portrait of childhood in Hamsun apart from in The Ring is Closed. Nor of parents. Characters emerge from nothing in his books. Without a vestige of a past. Was it because they actually had no meaning or because their meaning had been repressed? And so these characters somehow become the first mass-produced humans, that is without their own predetermining origins. They are determined by the present.’
I took a slice of pizza, cut the long threads of cheese holding it back and bit off a mouthful.
‘Try the dip,’ he said. ‘It’s good!’
‘You can keep the dip,’ I said.
‘When do you have to be there, by the way?’
‘Seven. It starts at half past.’
‘We’ve got an hour or two on our hands then. Shall we drive around for a bit? So that you can see some of your old haunts? I’ve got a couple of Kristiansand haunts as well. Mum’s uncle and his family lived in Lund. I’d like to pop by.’
‘Let’s have coffee somewhere else first. And then we’ll go. OK?’
‘There’s a café close by where we used to walk when I was a boy. We can see if it still exists?’
We paid and left. Strolled down to Hotel Caledonien. I told him about the fire there, how I had stood behind the barriers, gaping up at the black façade, where it was all burned out. We ambled past the containers in the harbour to the bus station, up by the stock exchange, across Markensgate and into some arty-type café. Despite the cold, we sat outside so that I could smoke. Then we walked to the car, drove first to the house in Elvegaten, where I had lived during the winter mum and dad got divorced. The house had been sold and renovated. Then we went to grandma and grandad’s house, where dad had died. Turned in the square in front of the marina, parked in the tiny street and looked up at the house. It had been painted white. The tables had been replaced. The garden was neat and tidy.
‘Is that it?’ Geir asked. ‘What a wonderful house! Attractive, middle class, expensive. I would never have believed it. I had imagined something quite different.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s it all right. But I have no feelings for it. It’s just a house. It doesn’t mean anything any more. I can see that now.’
Two hours later we parked in front of the folk high school where I was going to do the reading. It was situated in the middle of a forest outside Søgne. The sky was all black, everywhere stars twinkled and shone, somewhere nearby a river rushed and trees rustled. The sound of a car door slamming resounded between walls. Then the silence closed around us.
‘Are you sure it’s here?’ Geir asked. ‘In the middle of a forest? Who on earth would come here to listen to you read on a Friday evening?’
‘Who knows,’ I said. ‘But it is here. Nice, isn’t it?’
‘Oh yes. Full of atmosphere.’
Our footsteps crunched on the frozen gravel as we walked in. One building, a large white timber house that looked to be from the turn of the last century, was unlit. In the other, which was twenty metres away and at right angles to it, three windows were lit. Two figures were visible in one of them. They were playing the piano and violin. Then there was a large barn to the right, also unlit, where the reading was due to take place.
We wandered round for a few minutes, peered in through the darkened windows and saw a library and what seemed to be a living room. We followed the path, ended up by a stone bridge over a little river or stream. Black water and the forest like a black wall on the other side.
‘We’ve got to have a coffee or something,’ Geir said. ‘Shall we ask those two in there if they have a key?’
‘No, we’re not asking anyone anything,’ I said. ‘The event organisers will come when they come.’
‘We need to warm ourselves up a bit at the very least,’ Geir said. ‘You don’t mind us doing that, do you?’
‘Not at all.’
We entered the narrow house ringing with notes from the two young musicians. They must have been sixteen or seventeen. She had a soft beautiful face. He, the same age as her but pimply, ungainly and also flushed, did not seem happy to see us.
‘Have you got a key or something for these buildings? He’s doing a reading, and we’re a trifle on the early side.’
She shook her head. But we could sit down in the adjacent room, where there was also a coffee machine. So we did.
‘This place reminds me of school trips,’ Geir said. ‘The light in here. The cold and the darkness outside. And the forest. And the fact that no one knows where I am. No one knows what I’m doing. Yes, a kind of feeling of liberation. But there’s a lot of darkness. The atmosphere inside it.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘For myself, I’m simply nervous. My whole body aches.’
‘Because of this? Because of your talk here? Relax, man! It’ll be fine.’
I held up a hand.
‘See?’ I said.
I was trembling like an old man.
Half an hour later I was shown into the hall where I was to give the talk. Another bearded lecturer-type, late fifties with glasses, received me.
‘Isn’t this wonderful?’ he said as we entered.
I nodded. It really was. Inside the barn there was a large gallery like a capsule, built to give optimal acoustics, with seating for 200 people. Art on the walls of all the rooms. There was a lot of money in this country now, I reflected again. I placed my bag against the lectern, took out my papers and books, shook hands with a few others I had to greet, among them the bookseller who had come to set up shop after the talk, a charming energetic elderly woman, before going downstairs for a walk in the darkness, to the river, where I smoked two cigarettes. Then I sat on the toilet for a quarter of an hour with my head in my hands. When I went back up there was quite a turnout. Forty, maybe fifty? That was good. And there was a brass band, too, who were going to play some Baroque music. They kept it up for half an hour, in the middle of the forest on a Friday night, and then it was my turn. I stood in the centre with everyone’s eyes on me, drank water, flicked through my papers, began to talk, hesitantly, swallowed words, my voice quivered, until I got into my stride and could talk freely. The audience was attentive, their interest streamed up towards me, I relaxed more and more, they laughed where they were supposed to, and I was filled with a feeling of happiness, for few things are more uplifting than talking to an audience who are on your wavelength, who don’t just wish you well but are also into what you are talking about. I could see it, they were vitalised, and when I sat down to sign books afterwards they all wanted to discuss what I had said, it touched something in their lives which they were enthusiastic to tell me about. It was only when I was walking over to the car with Geir that I came down to the ground again, to where I usually was, to the place where contempt flourished. I said nothing, just got in and stared at the road winding its way through the dark landscape.