‘Yes.’
‘Kaspar Hauser, he’s the enigma of course. Now I never met your previous wife, Tonje, but I’ve seen photos of her, and although she’s not like Linda there was something innocent about her, her appearance. Not that I think she is innocent, necessarily, but she gives that impression. Innocence of this kind is typical of you. Purity and innocence don’t interest me. However, it’s very clear in you. You’re a deeply moral and a deeply innocent person. What is innocence? It is that which has not been touched by the world, that which has not been destroyed, it is like water into which a stone has never been thrown. It’s not that you don’t have lusts, that you don’t have desire, for you do, it’s just that you conserve innocence. Your insanely huge longing for beauty comes in here as well. It wasn’t by chance that you chose to write about angels. That’s the purest of the pure. You can’t get purer than that.’
‘But not in my novel. There it’s about the bodily, the physical side of them.’
‘Well, nevertheless, they are the very symbol of purity. And of the fall. But you have made them human, allowed them to fall, not into sin, but into human-ness.’
‘If you take an abstract view of this, in a way you’re right. The thirteen-year-old, that was innocence, and what happened to it? It had to be made physical.’
‘What a way to put it!’
‘Yeah, well, OK. She had to be screwed then. And the angels had to become human. So there’s a connection. But all this takes place in the subconscious. Deep down. So, in that sense, it’s not real. I might be heading in that direction, but I’m not aware of it. Of course, I didn’t know I had written a book about shame before reading the blurb on the cover. And I didn’t think about innocence and the thirteen-year-old until long after.’
‘It’s there though. Perfectly obvious and not a shred of doubt.’
‘OK. But hidden from me. And it strikes me there’s something you’re forgetting. Innocence is related to stupidity. What you’re talking about is stupidity, isn’t it? About ignorance?’
‘No, no, far from it,’ Geir said. ‘Innocence and purity have become a symbol of stupidity, but that’s nowadays. We live in a culture where the person with the most experience wins. It’s sick. Everyone knows which way modernism is going, you create a form by breaking up a form, in an endless regression; just let it continue, and for as long as it does, experience will have the upper hand. The unique feature of our times, the pure or independent act, is, as you know, to renounce, not to accept. Accepting is too easy. There’s nothing to be achieved by it. That’s more or less where I place you. Almost saint-like, in other words.’
I smiled. The waitress came with our beer.
‘Skål,’ I said.
‘Skål,’ he said.
I took a long swig, wiped the froth from my mouth with the back of my hand and put the glass on the beer mat in front of me. There was something uplifting about the light, golden colour, it seemed to me. I looked at Geir.
‘Saint-like?’ I repeated.
‘Yes. Saints in the Catholic faith could have been close to your way of believing and thinking and acting.’
‘You don’t think you’re going a little too far now?’
‘No, not at all. For me, what you do is utter mutilation.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of life, of opportunities, of living, of creating. Creating life, not literature. For me, you live in an almost frightening asceticism. Or rather, you wallow in asceticism. As I see it, it’s extremely unusual. Extremely deviant. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone, or heard of anyone… well, as I said, then I have to go back to the saints or the Church fathers.’
‘Stop right there.’
‘You did ask. There’s no other conceptual framework for you. There are no external characteristics, there’s no morality at stake, there’s no social morality, that’s not where it is. It’s in religion. Without a god though, that’s clear. You’re the only person I know who can take communion despite not believing in God and not commit blasphemy. The only person I know.’
‘No one else you know has done it, I suppose?’
‘They have, but not with purity! I did it when I got confirmed. I did it for money. Then I renounced the Church. What did I spend the money on? Well, I bought a knife. But that’s not what we were talking about. What were we talking about again?’
‘Me.’
‘Yes, that’s right. You have something in common with Beckett, in fact. Not in the way you write, but in the saintliness. It’s what Cioran says somewhere: “Compared with Beckett I’m a whore.” Ha ha ha! I think that’s absolutely spot on. Ha ha ha! And by the way Cioran was reckoned to be one of the most incorruptible people around. I look at your life and regard it as totally wasted. For that matter, I think that of everyone, but your life is even more wasted because there is more to waste. Your morality is not about tax declarations, as that idiot thought, but about your nature. Your nature, nothing less. And it is this enormous discrepancy between you and me which allows us to talk every day. Sympatio is the right term for it. I can sympathise with your fate. Because it is a fate, there is nothing you can do about it. All I can do is watch. Nothing can be done for you. There is nothing anyone can do. I feel sorry for you. But I can only view it as a tragedy unfolding at close quarters. As you know, a tragedy is when a great person goes through bad times. In contrast to a comedy, which is when a bad person goes through good times.’
‘Why tragedy?’
‘Because it is so joyless. Because your life is so joyless. You have such unbelievable reserves and so much talent, which stops there. It becomes art, but never more than that. You’re like Midas. Everything he touches turns to gold, but he gains no pleasure from it. Wherever he goes everything around him sparkles and glitters. Others search and search, and when they find a nugget, they sell it to acquire life, splendour, music, dance, enjoyment, luxury, or at least a bit of pussy, right, throw themselves at a woman just to forget they exist for an hour or two. What you lust for is innocence and this is an impossible equation. Lust and innocence can never be compatible. The ultimate is no longer the ultimate when you’ve stuck your dick in it. You have been allotted the Midas role, you can have everything and how many people do you think can have that? Almost no one. How many would turn it down? Even fewer. One, to my knowledge. If this isn’t a tragedy, then I don’t know what is. Could your journalist have made anything of this, do you reckon?’
‘No.’
‘No. He has his journo scales with which he weighs everything. Everyone is lumped into the same pot by journalists. That’s the basis of the whole system. But like that he won’t get close, not even close, to you or who you are. So we can forget it.’
‘It’s the same for everyone, Geir.’
‘We-ell, maybe, maybe not. Your distorted self-image and your yearning to be like everyone else also come into this.’
‘That’s what you say. I say that the picture you paint of me is one only you could have painted. Yngve or mum or any one of my relatives or friends wouldn’t have had a clue what you were talking about.’
‘That doesn’t make it any less true, does it?’
‘No, not necessarily, but I’m reminded of what she said about you once, that you big up everyone around you because you want your own life to be great.’