‘I can easily understand why Sartre took amphetamines,’ he said. ‘Life in the fast lane, achieve more, burn. That’s how it is. But the most consistent one of them all was Mishima. I always go back to him. He was forty-five when he took his own life. He was consistent. The hero had to be good-looking. Couldn’t be old. And Jünger, who went the other way. On his hundredth birthday he sat drinking cognac and smoking cigars, as sharp as a razor. Everything’s about strength. That’s all I’m interested in. Strength, courage, determination. Intelligence? No. I think you get that if you want. It’s not important, it’s not interesting. Growing up in the 70s and the 80s is a joke. We don’t do anything. And what we do do is just rubbish. I write to recapture my lost gravity. That’s what I do. But of course it serves no purpose. You know where I sit. You know what I do. My life is so trivial. And my enemies, they’re so trivial. It’s not worth wasting your strength on. But there’s nothing else. So here I sit, thrashing around in my bedroom.’
‘Vitalism,’ I said. ‘There is another vitalism, you know, the one connected with land and kinfolk. Norway in the 1920s.’
‘Oh, I’m not interested in that. There’s not a trace of Nazism in the vitalism I’m talking about. Not that it would matter if there was, but there isn’t. What I’m talking about is anti-liberal culture.’
‘There wasn’t a trace of Nazism in Norwegian vitalism either. It was the middle classes who imported Nazism, converted it into something abstract, an idea, in other words something that didn’t exist. It was about a longing for a plot of land, a longing for family. What makes Hamsun so complicated was that as a person he was so rootless, so anchorless, and as such modern, in an American sense. But he despised America, mass humanity, rootlessness. It was himself he despised. The irony that results from this is a great deal more relevant than Thomas Mann’s because it has nothing to do with style, it deals with basic existence.’
‘I’m not a writer, I’m a farmer,’ Geir said. ‘Ha ha ha! But, no, you can keep your land. I’m only interested in the social world. Nothing else. You can read Lucretius and shout hallelujah. You can talk about forests in the seventeenth century. I couldn’t be less interested. It’s only people that count.’
‘Have you seen that picture by Anselm Kiefer? It’s of a forest. All you can see is trees and snow, with red stains in places, and then there are some names of German poets written in white. Hölderlin, Rilke, Fichte, Kleist. It’s the greatest work of art since the war, perhaps in the whole of the previous century. What does it depict? A forest. What’s it about? Well, Auschwitz of course. Where’s the connection? It’s not about ideas, it reaches right down into the depths of culture, and it can’t be expressed in ideas.’
‘Have you had a chance to see Shoah?’
‘No.’
‘Forest, forest and more forest. And faces. Forest and gas and faces.’
‘The picture’s called Varus. As far as I remember, he was a Roman army commander who lost a decisive battle in Germany. The line goes right back from the 70s to Tacitus. Schama traces it in Landscape and Memory. We could have added Odin, who hangs himself from a tree. Perhaps he does, I don’t remember. But it’s forest.’
‘I can see where you’re going.’
‘When I read Lucretius it’s all about the magnificence of the world. And that, the magnificence of the world, is of course a Baroque concept. It died with the Baroque age. It’s about things. The physicality of things. Animals. Trees. Fish. If you’re sorry that action has disappeared, I’m sorry the world has disappeared. The physicality of it. We only have pictures of it. That’s what we relate to. But the apocalypse, what is it now? Trees disappearing in South America? Ice melting, the waters rising. If you write to recapture your gravity, I write to recapture the world. Yes, not the world I’m in. Definitely not the social world. The wonder-rooms of the Baroque age. The curiosity cabinets. And the world in Kiefer’s trees. That’s art. Nothing else.’
‘A picture?’
‘You’ve got me there. Yes, a picture.’
There was a knock at the door.
‘I’ll call you back,’ I said, and rang off. ‘Come in!’
Linda opened the door.
‘Are you on the phone?’ she said. ‘I just wanted to say I was going to have a bath. Keep an ear open for the children. In case they wake up. Don’t put your headphones on.’
‘OK. Are you going for a sleep afterwards?’
She nodded.
‘I’ll join you.’
‘Right,’ she said, smiled and closed the door. I called Geir back.
‘Well, what the hell do I know,’ I said with a sigh.
‘Or me,’ he said.
‘What have you been doing this evening?’
‘Listening to some blues. Got ten new CDs in the post today. And I’ve ordered… thirteen, fourteen, fifteen more.’
‘You’re mad.’
‘No, I’m not… Mum died today.’
‘What?’
‘She passed away in her sleep. So now her angst is over. What good did it do? one might ask. But dad’s devastated. And Odd Steinar, of course. We’re going down there in a few days. The funeral’s in a week. Weren’t you going to Sørland at about that time?’
‘Ten days later,’ I said. ‘I’ve just booked the tickets.’
‘Then we’ll see each other perhaps. We’re bound to stay on for a few days.’
There was a pause.
‘Why didn’t you tell me straight away?’ I said. ‘We chatted for half an hour before you told me. Were you trying to make a point out of everything being as normal?’
‘No. Oh no. You’ve got the wrong end of the stick. No, no. I just don’t want to go there. And when I talk to you I’m away from it. It was as simple as that. It’s not worth talking about. I’m sure you understand that. It doesn’t help at all. It’s the same with blues. It’s a place to escape to. Well, not that I feel a lot. But I reckon that’s a feeling too.’
‘It is.’
After we had rung off I went into the hall between the kitchen and the living room, took an apple and stood munching as I gazed at the kitchen, which had been stripped of everything. Plaster where the worktop had been, long planks leaning against the bare walls, the floor covered in dust, various tools and cables, some furniture which would soon be assembled wrapped in plastic packaging. The renovation was supposed to take another two weeks. All we had really wanted was a dishwasher, but the worktop wasn’t the right size for it, and it would be simpler, the fitter said, to have the whole kitchen changed. So that’s what we did. The owners of the block would pay.
A voice made me turn my head.
Had it come from the children’s room?
I went over and peeped in. They were asleep, both of them. Heidi in the top bunk, with her feet on the pillow and her head on the rolled-up duvet, Vanja beneath, on the duvet as well, with her arms and legs stretched out, her body in a little X-formation. She tossed her head from one side to the other and back again.
‘Mummy,’ she said.
She had opened her eyes.
‘Are you awake, Vanja?’ I asked.