But surely that wasn’t why I didn’t want to talk to Gilda? Or was it? For me incidents like this lay like a shadow over all those involved. No, it was her company I didn’t want to hear about. It was some kind of link between publishing houses and bookshops, as far as I was informed. Some event management stuff? Festivals and stunts…? Whatever it was I didn’t want to hear about it.
‘Nice evening at your place, by the way,’ Geir said.
‘Was that the last time we saw each other?’
‘Why?’
‘That was five weeks ago. Strange you should bring it up now.’
‘Ah, I see. I was talking about it with Christina yesterday, perhaps that’s why. We were thinking of inviting you all over soon.’
‘Good idea,’ I said. ‘By the way, Thomas is here. Have you seen him? He’s at the back there.’
‘Oh? Have you talked to him?’
‘Briefly. He said he’d come over later.’
‘He’s reading your book now. Did he say?’
I shook my head.
‘He really liked the essay about angels. Thought it should have been much longer. But that’s typical of him not to say anything to you. He must have forgotten you wrote it. Ha ha ha! He’s so terribly forgetful.’
‘I suppose he’s just immersed inside himself,’ I said. ‘The same happens to me. And, for Christ’s sake, I’m only thirty-five. Do you remember when I came here with Thure Erik? We stayed here drinking all day and night. As the hours passed he began to talk about his own life. He told me about his childhood, his mother, father and sisters, about generations of his family. Firstly he’s pretty damned good at storytelling, and secondly there were a couple of quite sensational things he said. However, even though I listened very carefully and even though I thought to myself, this is bloody fantastic, by the following day I had forgotten everything. All that was left was the narrative structure. I remembered that he had talked about his childhood, his father and his family. And that it had been sensational. But I couldn’t remember what it was that constituted the “sensational”. Not a thing! A black hole!’
‘You were drunk.’
‘That’s got nothing to do with it. I remember Tonje was always talking about something terrible that had happened in her life, many years ago, she was forever harking back to it, but she wouldn’t say what it was, we didn’t know each other well enough, it was the great secret of her life. Do you understand? Two years went by before she finally told me what it was. There wasn’t any alcohol involved. And I was completely and utterly present, I listened attentively to every word she had to say, and afterwards we discussed it at length. But then it was gone. A few months later nothing was left. I don’t remember a thing. And that put me in an extremely tricky position because this was so unbelievably painful for her, it was such a raw topic she would have left me if I’d said I was sorry, I couldn’t remember anything. So then I had to pretend I knew the whole story whenever it came up. And this forgetfulness can arise anywhere. Once, for example, I suggested to Fredrik at Damm that they should publish a book of Norwegian short prose, and in his next email he continued the conversation without referring directly to the idea and I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. It had totally gone from my mind. There are writers who have told me what they are writing about with great passion and intensity, and I have responded, chatted with equal passion for perhaps half an hour or an hour at a stretch. A few days later, totally gone. I still don’t know what my mother actually wrote her dissertation on. At a certain point you can no longer ask without causing great offence, right, so I pretend. I sit there nodding and smiling, wondering what the hell it was again. It’s like that for me in all areas of life. You may think it’s because I don’t care enough, or I’m not present enough, but that’s not true, I do care and I am present. Nevertheless, puff, gone. Yngve, on the other hand, can remember everything. Everything! Linda remembers everything. And you remember everything. However, to complicate matters, there are also things that have never been said or have never happened which I’m sure actually took place. Thure Erik again: do you remember when I met Henrik Hovland at Biskops-Arnö?’
‘Naturally.’
‘It turned out that he came from a farm very close to Thure Erik’s. He knew them well and talked a bit about Thure Erik’s father. Then I said that Thure Erik’s father was dead now. Oh? said Henrik Hovland, it was the first he had heard. But he didn’t have much contact with people in the area any more, he said. Nevertheless, he was obviously surprised. He had no doubt it was true. Why would I say Thure Erik’s father was dead if he wasn’t? Because he wasn’t. The next time I met Thure Erik, he spoke about his father in the present tense, with no hesitation or anguish. He was very much alive. So what had made me think he was dead? Enough for me to proclaim it as a fact? I do not know. I haven’t a clue. But it meant I was nervous whenever I met Thure Erik after that, for what if he had bumped into Hovland and Henrik had offered his condolences, and Thure Erik had sent him a bemused look, what was he talking about, well, your father, he died so suddenly, didn’t he, my father, where the hell did you get that from? Er, Knausgaard told me. Is he alive? Is that what you’re saying? But Knausgaard said…? No one on earth would accept I said that by mistake, that I really believed it, because why would I believe it, no one could have told me, no other fathers of people I knew had died, so there was no chance of my being confused. It was pure fantasy, but I thought it was the truth. It’s happened a few times, but not because I’m a mythomaniac, I really do believe what I say. God knows how often I go round believing facts that are just nonsense!’