Chapter 15 - Only Human

On the way up the steps to Majorstuhuset, heading for the train, I felt I wanted to buy something. I did not want to go home, and did not want to think, but I wanted something, that is to say, I wanted to feel the desire for something, a direction. So I turned around. I could think of several purchases to make. Espresso coffee. Red wine and new trainers. I had a sudden sense of anticipation: now I had an errand to run, alternative courses of action, a task.

As I crossed the street, I saw the man from Baker Hansen standing outside the 7-Eleven on the large paved area next to the Vinkelgården building eating a hot dog. He had his scarf in his pocket, one fringed end trailing in the snow. He wiped some ketchup from around his mouth while staring at me.

I stared back, do you want me to brain you, smash your face in, shithead?

I passed close, wanted to spit on him, your existence disgusts me, but brushed against him with a rigid shoulder and hurried on in the direction of the coffee shop. There could be no hesitation on my part, that would only provide him with an opening, enough time to make contact.

It seemed dark in the shop after the harsh light outdoors. I ordered a bag of espresso-ground Blue Java. My hands trembled on the counter. The bag of coffee was warm and soft, the smell both penetrating and soothing. I felt I needed to sit down. There was a bar stool free in the corner by the window. I leaned my head and shoulder against the wall and looked out. He was still standing there. His stomach was sticking out over the waistband of his trousers in a tight, gaudy jumper, visible beneath his open jacket. What was it he actually had in his pockets: keys, a mobile phone, a wallet, change, screws, a tape measure, a bill plucked from his letterbox as he hurried out? Things like that, no doubt. A fitting for a water pipe, car keys, a padlock. Only wellies on his feet. What made him think that I was interested? Was he actually interested? His type, did they not just want to latch on to someone, avoid being alone?

I was cut from the same cloth, it must be written on my forehead: better to be kind and docile than rejected and abandoned. Why else would I attract nutcases; whether they were straggly and clingy like small puppies, or snorted and raved, had all kinds of crap on their mind that they wanted me to take on board, they followed me, stuck to me, God knows why, what did they achieve? I just let them talk. Answered if I was able, but it did not seem as though they listened, I was the one who was supposed to listen, that was what they wanted. Jesus, Mum, Tuva says, why do you do that? Someone has to take them seriously, I say, they’re human beings, just like us, but Tuva waves my explanation aside and says, then they ought to behave like people, you have to show them you have respect for yourself, Mum, or they won’t show you any respect. Set boundaries, y’know.

When I was young they were constantly following me, and they were often as old as Dad. Horrible sights of naked, white backsides, all too slack and wobbly, boneless, I wanted to vomit, really. But now I could not shudder in disgust or be insulted, soon I would be just as old.

I was like them.

So which of us was less human? Me or the man with the scarf? The contemptible one or the one showing contempt?

But for God’s sake. Can you be more or less human, can a human lose their humanity, is that not just a theoretical delimitation, a play on words? And perhaps the words make sense, but not when I am among people. Out on the street. Then I am always afraid. The empathy in a face impossible to grade. He followed me down Bogstadveien. I crossed the street and walked back up on the other side, went into United Bakeries and found my way to the toilet at the rear of the premises. Once in there I locked the door, sat down on the toilet seat and did not open until someone rattled the door handle for the fourth time, a customer had fetched one of the employees. On my way out I brushed against the jam bowl beside the cutlery and napkins, making it fall. Shards of glass and strawberry jam splattered on the floor and the meddlesome customer called out after me, hey, aren’t you going to clean up after yourself?

My scalp itched beneath my hat, my head was unbearably hot.

No, I thought. No. I am not my best at the moment. Look at me. I am not up to it. Someone else can clean up.

I hoped he was gone, but when I got a little way down the street, I spotted the sagging jacket over the stooped back, the wellies slipping on the snow-covered pavement. For fuck’s sake, did he not have a job, was he on benefits? Feeling hatred, I ducked into the nearest clothes shop, Yoko Loko or whatever it was called. There were no customers and the girl behind the counter left me alone. I tried on dresses, trousers and tops in the cramped changing room while my eyes and nose ran, I began to blubber because there were too many clothes to choose between and I was not able, I was not able, I lost heart, but at the same time the longer I kept at it, the more important it became to make a decision. The pressure of thinking made my temporal arteries thump, I tried to weigh up the pros and cons of each article of clothing, be efficient, because this was a task requiring a result within a certain time, if not there would be no purchase, I would end up paralysed and leaving the shop empty-handed. In that case I would have wasted time. What a waste, what a failure.

Eventually I decided on a pair of tight jeans and a blue denim shirt. The clothes fitted well, I looked youthful, a little cowgirl-like, Joan Baez-like, but not too much.

What a cool combination, the Swedish shop assistant said, really worth the money.

Christ almighty, money. Could I not get away from it?

‘Working Class Hero’ by John Lennon was playing as I paid, and for a moment I wondered if it was supposed to be ironic, but I noticed they also sold Mao jackets and Che Guevara hats, and realised the music was only intended to associate the clothes with the right attitude, it was as basic as that. Most things are simply thought out.

But I did not belong to the upper class, did I, even though I had access to money? I was outside everything. Me and the money were floating somewhere outside it all. I was an artist. Kept by my parents. Supported by patronage. I could not manage to escape. It was too late to break with that. Poor thing. The children were born and had grown up. The work was done and the books written. Loss after loss. Even if I gave up the grant and refrained from writing another word for the rest of my life, I would still live off Mum and Dad’s money. Advance inheritance, followed by inheritance, a house worth millions of kroners, but you cannot call privilege like that incarceration, a closed loop, it would be unethical in a world such as ours, ungrateful, but it could still be true. It was true: I was not outside, on the contrary, but I wanted out, I was filled with rebellion and the urge to break free.

I saw no sign of him, but guessed he was there somewhere, waiting. Further down the street, in a shop perhaps, out of sight, on the lookout for me. I crossed Schulz’ gate. Jews lived in this area before the war. I do not know why that should pop into my head on this particular day, a day with all its sparkling snow that should put you in mind of Sunday outings on cross-country skis, Norwegian culture in its purest form, and by that I meant pure nature. Because nature is pure to Norwegians. We even regard a rotting animal carcass as pure provided the remains are located deep in the forest, that is to say, when the bacteria occur in a natural form. That is to say, not in a rubbish bin. Not in the city. We value pure, natural and undiluted forms. We are not mystics, we are not dark. We are us. On the outside we are easily recognisable. Inside, we are governed by emotion, but are also unemotional, distant from the world. We love nature, but not people. The others.

I did not get any further with these thoughts, hardly understood what I meant myself, but had a sense of seeing something double which simultaneously swapped places, almost the way down can be up, and up down. Something internal changing places with something external. But so what really? All these thoughts, and I was the only one aware of them, in a few years both the thoughts and I would be gone, so why was I so obsessed with them? This reasoning, the closest I came to something substantial.

I wanted to drown the man with the scarf in white snow, bury him, make him go under and disappear.

Deep down we ignore mixed forms, I thought, we do not want them, and consequently neither do we see them. We are not so indiscreet and rude as to bad-mouth our neighbours’ mixed marriage in plain speech. But unconsciously we can be, like when we are two-faced.

Genocide so distant, external enemies, fear.

We attack ourselves with emotions instead, those closest to us.

Granny told me how she used to see the Jew riff-raff, that a whole community lived in tenements on Schulz’ gate, they hung out the windows in the afternoons and were different, dark. Or was it Sorgenfrigata? I always mixed those two streets up. The irony: sorgenfrei, carefree. Granny laughed at the Jews, hook-nosed hawkers, she used to say. And when she did it made me think of something I did not dare to mention: Granny’s own hooked nose.

At the junction with Professor Dahls gate I caught sight of him going into the Arabian café. I knew it well, had often sat there writing because the premises were dark and had an atmosphere that was hard to pin down, a sort of energy induced by restlessness. I think it was due to the owner, or rather the friends of his always coming by. One or two would sit on chairs behind the counter. Or stand hanging around the till discussing something in Arabic, gesticulating, visibly concentrating. Tight-fitting white T-shirts, Marlboro packets and lighters, a smell of aftershave, they brought all of that along with them into the café where I sat squinting down at my notebook. However, they usually sat at one of the tables outside, where they could smoke. The owner served customers at the till while talking to his friends at the same time, or he took his glass of coffee outside, sitting with them until a new customer was on the way in the door. He did not look at me when I ordered coffee, never smiled in recognition when I entered.

I did not know what they talked so intensely about, if it was football, politics or women, I did not understand what they said nor what I saw. Were they serious, earnest and upright? Or were they irresponsible and lacking drive? I really would have liked to know, but on the other hand, I thought, as I sat there writing, if I did find out then perhaps I would not have begun pondering the importance of talking, or have been able to long for conversations with more content than the ones I had with my own friends. I yearned. Which meant there must be something to yearn for, even if it only existed in my imagination, like the idea of perfection in other people.

I turned, walked a little way back and went into a shoe shop. There were shelves of trainers by the entrance. All of them were made in China and none of them cost less than twelve hundred kroners, I checked, held each one in my hand to gauge if it was light enough, bent it to see how flexible the sole was, longed to run on the roads. It felt good looking at new shoes in strong colours, I was almost far away, deep in thought, but then I began to sweat, my pulse beat faster, my hat itched, enraged I tore it off, unbuttoned my coat, left the shop, and suddenly: a large space around the mind, that did not know what it thought. I found myself far back in time, and I was standing bent over the drop-leaf table in my student bedsit, furious. All my youthful energy intact, but no direction for it to take, going in circles. A frightening person. Filled with sex.

I wiped the sweat from my upper lip and set off downhill. My scarf was moist and the back of my neck cold. When I reached the Arabian café I slowed down and looked in the windows. The man with the scarf was sitting at a table with a beer in front of him. When he spotted me, he rose quickly to his feet. I gave him the finger and broke into a run.

The following day I rang the Arts Council and Authors’ Union and asked them to ignore the letters I had sent. Don’t read them, I said. As though it had ever been necessary to ask someone to refrain from reading something I wrote. But it would not prevent me from assuming my fundamental duties, I thought, God knows what I meant, but I suppose it’s possible to work it out:

Nobody has the right to be read

But I am not getting what I deserve

I reap what I sow

But I have no control over the weather

I cannot get away from myself

No but, nobody can.

It was not possible to leave, I still ended up inside, only in a different way: off kilter, wretched, easy prey. Yes, there were many words to describe a person back in the fold, in a community, even if it was a community composed of the misguided.