‘Good job I’m such a monomaniac and talk about the same stuff all the time. In that way I hammer it home and you can’t make a mistake.’
‘Are you sure? When was the last time you spoke to your father?’
‘Ha ha.’
‘It’s a disability. It’s like poor vision. Over there, is that a person? Or a small tree? Ouch, I’ve just bumped into something. A table. Aha, it’s a restaurant! Keep close to the wall on the way to the bar. Whoops! Something soft? A person? Sorry! Do you know me? Oh, Knut Arild! Oh shit! I didn’t recognise you straight away… And the terrible thought that arises from this is that everyone has such disabilities. Their inner, private, secret black holes which they expend so much energy on trying to hide. And that the world is full of inner cripples bumping into one another. Yes, behind all the attractive and less attractive, though at least normal and non-frightening faces we confront. Not psychologically or spiritually or psychically, but in a conscious manner, physiognomically. Defects in thoughts, consciousness, memory, perception and comprehension.’
‘But that is how it is. Ha ha ha! That’s how it is! Look around you, man! Wake up! How many comprehension deficiencies do you think there are just in here? Why do you think we have established forms for everything we do? Forms of conversation, address, lectures, serving, eating, drinking, walking, sitting and even sex. You name it, it’s there. Why do you think normality is so sought after if not for this very reason? It’s the only place where we can be sure of meeting. But even there we don’t meet. Arne Næss once described how, when he knew he was going to meet an ordinary, normal person, he would make a supreme effort to be ordinary and normal while this normal person, from his side, presumably exerted himself to the utmost to reach Næss. Yet they would never meet, according to Næss, the chasm that existed between them could not be bridged. Formally, yes, but not in reality.’
‘But wasn’t it Arne Næss who also said that he could parachute from a plane anywhere on the planet and know that he would always be greeted with hospitality? Always have a meal and a bed somewhere?’
‘Yes, it was. I wrote about it in my thesis.’
‘That must be where I’ve got it from. The world is small.’
‘At least ours is,’ Geir said with a smile. ‘But he’s quite right. This is my experience too. There is a kind of minimum common humanity which you meet everywhere. In Baghdad it was very much like that.’
Gilda came behind him across the floor in low heels and a flowery summer dress.
‘Hi, Karl Ove,’ she said. ‘How are you?’
‘Hi, Gilda,’ I said. ‘Very well. How about you?’
‘Fine too. Working a lot now, you know. How are things at home? With Linda and your little daughter? It’s terrible how time has flown since we last talked. Is she OK? Is she doing well?’
‘Yes, she is. She’s busy with her course at the moment. So I’m busy taking Vanja out in the buggy during the day.’
‘And what’s that like?’
I shrugged.
‘OK.’
‘I’m wondering about it myself, you see. What it’s like to have a child. I think they’re a bit repellent. And the enormous belly and the milk in your breasts — that bothers me, to tell the truth. But Linda’s happy?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Well, there you go. Say hello to her. I’ll ring her one day. Tell her!’
‘I will. Regards to Kettil!’
She raised a hand in a wave and went back to her seat.
‘She’s just taken her test,’ I said. ‘Did I tell you that? The first time she drove on her own she was behind a lorry and two lanes merged into one, but she thought she had time to overtake, accelerated and moved out, only to see that she couldn’t. Her car was forced against the crash barrier, ended up on its side and skidded along for several hundred metres. But she was unhurt.’
‘That one’s going to live to be an old lady,’ Geir said.
The waitress came and cleared the table. We ordered two more beers. Sat for a while without saying anything. I smoked a cigarette and manoeuvred the soft ash into a little pile in the shiny ashtray with the tip.
‘I’m paying today, just so that you know,’ I said.
‘OK,’ Geir said.
If I didn’t say straight out I was seeing to the bill he would, and when he had made up his mind it was impossible to change it. Once we had been out, all four of us, Geir and Christina and Linda and me, to a Thai restaurant at the end of Birger Jarlsgatan, and he had said he was going to pay, and I had said no, we should at least share, no, he said, I’m paying and that’s that. After the waiter had taken his card I had pulled out half the sum in cash and put it on the table in front of him. He made no move to take it, in fact, it didn’t seem as if he had even seen it. The coffee came, we drank it and as we got up to go, ten minutes later, he still hadn’t touched the money. Hey, take the money, I said, we’re sharing this one. Come on now. No, I’m paying, he repeated. It’s your money. You take it. So I had no choice but to pick up the money and stuff it back into my pocket. If I hadn’t it would have been left there, I knew. Then he smiled his most obnoxious I-knew-you-would smile. And I regretted not having paid. No sacrifice was too great for Geir when it was about not losing face. But from Christina’s face, which was so incredibly sensitive and betrayed all her thoughts, she appeared to be ashamed of him. Or at least found the situation embarrassing. I had never entered into open conflict with him. Wisely, perhaps, for there was something in him I would never defeat. If we had a competition to outstare each other, the way you do when you’re young, he would have held my stare for a week if need be. I would have held his as well, but sooner or later I would have thought this was unnecessary and looked down. He would never entertain such an idea.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘How has your day been?
‘I’ve been writing about the Grenzsituation, the border situation. To be precise, about Stockholm in the eighteenth century. How high the mortality rate was, how short their lives were and what they did with the lives they had, compared with ours. Then Cecilia came into the office wanting to chat. We went for lunch together. She had been out last night with her partner and his friend. She had flirted with the friend all evening, she said, and her partner had been livid when they got home, of course.’