I had read Espen’s questions, which all focused closely on Hauge’s poems, and if Hauge was not of a mind to talk about his poems, they were all useless. The ensuing silence was protracted. Now Espen was as dark and brooding as Hauge. They were poets, I thought, that is how they are. Compared to their heavy gloom I felt like a lightweight, a dilettante with no understanding of anything, just drifting across the surface, watching soccer, who recognized the names of a few philosophers and liked pop music of the simplest variety. One of the songs I had written for our band, which was the closest I got to poetry, was called “Du duver så deilig” (You Sway so Sweetly). I had to step into the breach because it was obvious that Espen was not going to say any more in the course of this interview, so I began to ask questions about the municipality of Jølster where my mother lived, because the artist Astrup came from there, and Hauge had been interested in him, he had even written a poem about him. There was obviously an elective affinity between them. But he didn’t want to speak about this. Instead he talked about a trip he’d made ages ago, some time in the sixties, or so it sounded, and all the names he mentioned, while contemplating the floor, he mentioned in a confidential way as if everyone knew them. We had never heard of them, and this all seemed, if not cryptic, then at least to have no special meaning other than a private one. I asked a question about translation, Asbjørn another, they were answered in the same way, in immensely casual tones, as though he were simply sitting there and talking to himself. Or to the floor, rather. As an interview it was a disaster. But then, after perhaps an hour of this procedure, another car turned into the drive. It was NRK Hordaland, local Radio & TV, they wanted Hauge to read a few poems. They started, but they had forgotten a cable, and had to return for it, and when they resumed, Hauge changed, he was suddenly friendly with us, made jokes and smiled, now it was us against NRK, and the ice was broken, for when NRK had finished recording and had gone on their way his friendliness continued, he was present in quite a different way, and open. His wife came in with a freshly made apple pie for us, and after we had eaten he showed us around the house, took us up to the library on the first floor where he also worked, I saw a notebook on the desk with “Diary” written on the cover, and there he pulled books off the shelves and talked about them, among others one by Julia Kristeva, I remember, because I thought, you definitely haven’t read that one, Hauge had never been to university, and if you have, you definitely didn’t understand it, and then, as we went downstairs, he said something enormously charged and meaningful about death, the tone was resigned and laconic, but not without irony, and I thought I will have to remember this, this is important, I’ll have to remember this for the rest of my life, but by the time we were in the car on our way home along the Hardanger fjord I had forgotten. He was walking a few steps behind me, Espen and Asbjørn were already out, it was photo time. While Hauge sat on the stone bench with legs crossed, gazing into the distance, and Asbjørn was taking shots from several angles, crouching one second, standing the next, Espen and I were smoking a few meters away. It was a wonderful autumn day, cold and bright; as we drove inland from Bergen in the morning, frozen mist was lying over the fjord. The trees on the mountainsides were displaying red and yellow leaves, the fjord below was like a millpond, the waterfalls immense and white. I was happy, the interview was over, and it had gone well, but I was also agitated, something about Hauge filled me with unease. Something that would not rest, and I was unsure of the source. He was an old man, wore old man’s clothes, a flannel shirt and old man’s trousers, slippers and a hat, and had an old man’s gait, yet there was nothing old mannish about him, such as there was with my grandfather or my father’s uncle, Alf; on the contrary, when he suddenly opened up to us and wanted to show us things, it was in a kind of artless, childlike way, infinitely friendly, but also infinitely vulnerable, the way a boy without friends might behave when someone showed some interest in him, one might imagine, unthinkable in the case of my grandfather or Alf, it must have been at least sixty years since they had opened up to anyone like that, if indeed they ever had. But no, Hauge hadn’t really opened himself to us, it was more as if it had been his natural self which his rejection had been protecting when we arrived. I saw something I didn’t want to see because the person showing us was unaware of how it looked. He was more than eighty years old, but nothing in him had died or calcified, which actually makes life far too painful to live, that’s what I think now. At the time it just made me uneasy.
“Can we do some by the apple trees as well?” Asbjørn said.
Hauge nodded, got up, and followed Asbjørn to the trees. I bent down and stubbed out my cigarette on the ground, cast around for a place to put it as I straightened up, I couldn’t just flick it onto his drive, but couldn’t see anywhere suitable so put it in my pocket.
Surrounded by mountains on all sides, it felt as if we were standing in an enormous vault. There was still a warm, gentle waft to the air, as there often is in autumnal Vestland.
“Do you think we can ask him if he would read some poems for us?” Espen said.
“If you dare,” I said, and noticed that Asbjørn was smiling. If Hauge was a poet for Espen, he was a legend for Asbjørn, and now he was standing there photographing him with permission to take all the time he needed. Once we had finished we went into the living room to fetch our things. I took out the book I had bought in a shop on the way, Hauge’s collected poems, and asked him if he would write a line for my mother in it.
“What’s her name?” he said.
“Sissel,” I said.
“Anything else?”
“Hatløy. Sissel Hatløy.”
“To Sissel Hatløy with best wishes from Olav H. Hauge,” he wrote, and passed it back.
“Thank you,” I said.
He escorted us to the door as we left. Espen had his back to him, getting the book ready, then suddenly turned with a face shining with embarrassment and hope.