‘Do you want a beer?’ she asked.
I shook my head.
‘Maybe afterwards. But by then you’ll probably be too tired.’
‘Probably. Did you get the tickets?’
‘Yes.’
I saw Modern Times for the first time at the film club in Bergen when I was twenty. There was one scene where I couldn’t stop laughing. Most people can’t remember when they last laughed, but I remember when I laughed twenty years ago, because of course it doesn’t happen that often. I remember both the shame of losing control and the pleasure of letting myself go. What started me off is still crystal clear in my memory. Chaplin has to perform in a kind of variety show. It’s an important performance, there’s a lot at stake, he is nervous and jots down the lyrics as an aide-memoire and slips them up his jacket sleeves before he goes on. As he steps onto the dance floor he welcomes the audience with a broad, sweeping flourish and the scraps of paper are sent flying. Then he is left standing there without the lyrics while the orchestra strikes up behind him. What should he do? Yes, he chases after them, improvising a dance to cover the fact that something has gone wrong, while the band plays the intro again and again. I laughed until I cried. But the scene moves into a different phase because he can’t retrieve the pieces of paper, however much he dances around, and in the end he has to start singing. He stands there in total silence, and when he does begin it is with words that do not exist, but they are similar because although the meaning has gone, the notes and the melody remain, and I was filled with joy, I remember, not only for me but for the whole of humanity, as there was such warmth there and it was one of our own who had produced it.
When I took my seat in the auditorium beside Linda this evening I was unsure what was awaiting us. Chaplin, well, yes. Something someone like Fosnes Hansen writes an essay about when the topic is humour. And would I still find what I had laughed at fifteen years ago funny?
I would. And in exactly the same place. He comes on, greets the audience, his crib sheets fly out of his sleeves, he dances round the floor, with his feet somehow behind him, in tow, he doesn’t lose contact with the audience for one second; the whole time he’s dancing and searching he nods politely to them. A tear ran down my cheek at the ensuing pantomime. Everything was so wonderful that evening, I thought. We were giggling as we left the cinema, Linda was happy that I was so happy, I imagined, but also for her own part. We walked hand in hand up the stone steps beside the Finnish Cultural Institute, laughing as we regaled each other with scenes from the film. Then it was along Regeringsgatan, past the bakery, the furniture shop and US Video, unlock the door and up the stairs to our flat. It was a few minutes after half past ten, and Linda could barely keep her eyes open, so we went straight to bed.
Ten minutes later the music blared out beneath us again. I had completely forgotten about the Russian, and sat up in bed with a start.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Linda said. ‘This can’t be true.’
I could hardly hear what she was saying.
‘It’s not even eleven o’clock yet,’ I said. ‘And it’s Friday evening. So we won’t get anywhere.’
‘I don’t care,’ Linda said. ‘I’m going to ring. This is damn well not on.’
She had barely got up and left the room when the music stopped. We went back to bed. This time I was asleep when it started. At the same unbelievable volume. I looked at the clock. Half past eleven.
‘Will you ring?’ Linda asked. ‘I haven’t had a wink of sleep.’
But the same thing happened. After a few minutes she switched it off and there was silence below.
‘I’ll sleep in the living room,’ Linda said
That night she turned on the music full blast twice more. The last time she had the audacity to play it for a full half-hour before switching off. It was ridiculous but also unpleasant. She was out of her mind, and had apparently developed a hatred for us. Anything could happen, we felt. But more than a week passed before the next incident occurred. We were putting some potted plants on the windowsill in the stairwell outside our door, this was a communal area and strictly speaking not any concern of ours, but on the floor above they had done the same, and surely no one could object to the cold staircase being brightened up a bit? Two days later the plants were gone. That didn’t matter so much, but the pots had once belonged to my great-grandmother, some of the few items I had brought with me from the house in Kristiansand when my father’s mother died — they were from the early 1900s, and so it was quite irritating that they had gone. Or had someone stolen them? But who would steal flower pots? Or had someone removed them because they took exception to our initiative? We decided to put a notice on the board asking if anyone had seen them. That same evening the notice was adorned with expletives and accusations written in blue ink and bad Swedish. Were we accusing the residents of stealing? If so, we could move out this minute. Who the hell did we think we were? A few days later I was assembling a nappy-changing table we had bought at Ikea, a bit of hammering was required, but as it was only seven in the evening I didn’t think this would be a problem. But it was: after the first bangs with the hammer there was a wild pounding on the pipes below, it was our Russian neighbour’s way of protesting about what she clearly regarded as a violation of house rules. But I couldn’t let her stop me finishing, so I continued. A minute later the door below slammed and she was outside ours. I opened up. How could we complain about her when we made such a racket ourselves? I tried to explain to her the difference between playing loud music in the middle of the night and assembling a table at seven in the evening, but this fell on deaf ears. With the same wild eyes and indignant gestures she stuck to her guns. She had been asleep; we had woken her up. We thought we were better than her, but we were not…
From that day on she had a set strategy. Whenever a sound carried down to her, even if it was only me walking heavily across the floor, she banged on the pipes. The reverberation was penetrating, and since the sender was not visible, like a kind of bad conscience in the room. I hated it; it was as though I wasn’t allowed to have any peace anywhere, not even in my own home.
Then, in the days before Christmas, all went quiet downstairs. We bought a Christmas tree from a stall in Humlegården; it had been dark, the air was laden with snow, and the typical pre-Christmas chaos reigned in the streets, with people racing past, oblivious to one another and the world. We chose one, the overalls-clad salesman pulled a net over it for ease of transport, I paid and lugged it over my shoulder. Only then did it strike me it might have been a trifle on the large side. Half an hour later, after innumerable stops on the way, I dragged it into our flat. We laughed when we saw it upright in the living room. It was enormous. We had bought a gigantic Christmas tree. But perhaps that was not so stupid, as this was the last Christmas we would be celebrating on our own. On Christmas Eve we ate the Swedish festive fare Linda’s mother had brought us, unwrapped presents and watched Chaplin’s Circus because we had bought ourselves a box set of all his films. We worked our way through the lot over the Christmas period, went for long walks in the holiday-empty streets, waited and waited. We forgot about the Russian, the outside world didn’t exist for the whole of the Christmas weekend. We went to see Linda’s mother, stayed there a few days, and on our return we started to prepare for a New Year’s Eve dinner with Geir and Christina and Anders and Helena.
I cleaned the whole flat that morning, went shopping for dinner, ironed the big white tablecloth, inserted the extra leaf in the dining room table and laid it, polished the silverware and candlesticks, folded the serviettes and placed bowls of fruit on the table, such that by the time the guests arrived at seven the place was sparkling and glittering with bourgeois respectability. The first to arrive were Anders and Helena and their daughter. Helena and Linda had got to know each other when Helena took lessons with Linda’s mother, and even though Helena was seven years older than Linda they had become the best of friends. Anders had been with her for the last three years. She was an actress; he was… well, a kind of criminal.