‘What are you doing?’ I asked after this long silence, by any criteria.
‘Watching ice hockey on TV,’ she said.
‘Ice hockey?’ I said. And then we chatted for a quarter of an hour. And decided we would meet again.
We did, but nothing happened, there was no excitement, or rather the excitement was so great it didn’t allow us to move, it was as if we were caught in it, all the things we wanted to say to each other, but couldn’t.
Polite phrases. Little openings, leading elsewhere, her everyday life, she had a mother in Stockholm, and a brother, and all her friends. Apart from six months in Florence she had lived in Stockholm all her life. Where had I lived?
Arendal, Kristiansand, Bergen. Six months in Iceland, four months in Norwich.
Did I have any brothers or sisters?
A brother, a half-sister.
You were married, weren’t you?
Yes. In a way I still am.
Oh.
Early one evening, in the middle of April, she rang. Did I feel like meeting her? Of course. I was out with Geir and Christina, I said, we were in Guldapan, you could join us if you like.
Half an hour later she was there.
She was beaming.
‘I’ve been accepted by the Dramatiska Institut today,’ she said. ‘I’m so happy, it’s just wonderful. And then I suddenly felt like meeting you,’ she said, looking at me.
I smiled at her.
We were out all evening, got drunk, walked back to my place together, I gave her a hug outside the gate and went up to the flat.
The next day Geir rang.
‘She’s in love with you, man,’ he said. ‘You can see it miles off. That was the first thing Christina said when we left. She’s almost luminous with it. Unbelievably in love with Karl Ove.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘She was happy she’s got into the Dramatiska Institut.’
‘Why would she ring you if that was all it was?’
‘How should I know? Why don’t you ring her and ask?’
‘And what’s the situation with your feelings?’
‘Fine.’
Linda and I went to the cinema. For some idiotic reason we saw the new Star Wars film, it was for children, and having confirmed that, we went to Folkoperan and sat without saying much.
I was depressed as I left, I was so incredibly sick of having everything inside me, being unable to say the simplest thing to anyone.
It passed. I was fine on my own, Stockholm was still new to me, spring had arrived, every second day at twelve I put on my trainers and ran around Söder, it was ten kilometres, on the days between I swam a thousand metres. I had lost ten kilos, and I had started to write again. I got up at five, had a cigarette and a couple of coffees on the roof terrace, from which there was a view of the whole of Stockholm, then I worked until twelve, ran or swam, and afterwards went into town and sat in a café reading, or just drifted around, unless I met Geir. At half past eight, as the sun was setting and colouring the wall blood-red above the bed, I lay down to read. I started The Karinhall Hunters by Carl Henning Wijkmark, Geir had recommended it, I read in the glow of the sinking sun, and suddenly, out of nowhere, I was imbued with a wild, dizzy feeling of happiness. I was free, completely free, and life was fantastic. I could on occasion be seized by this feeling, perhaps once every six months, it was strong, it lasted for a few minutes, and then it passed. The oddity this time was that it didn’t pass. I woke up and was happy, buggered if I could remember that happening since I was a little boy. I sat on the terrace and sang in the pale sunlight, and when I wrote I didn’t care if it was bad, there were other, better things in the world than writing novels, and when I ran my body was as light as a feather, while my brain, which was usually focused on surviving and not much else on my runs, looked around and enjoyed the dense leafy greenery, the blue water of the many canals, the crowds of people everywhere, the beautiful and less beautiful buildings. After returning home and taking a shower I had some soup and crispbread, and then I went to the park to read some more of Wijkmark’s debut novel, about the Norwegian marathon runner who slips into Goering’s hunting castle during the Berlin Olympics in 1936, rang Espen or Tore or Eirik or mum or Yngve or Tonje, whom I was still with, nothing else had been said, went to bed early, got up in the middle of the night and ate plums or apples without knowing until I woke and found the remains on the floor beside the bed. At the beginning of May I went to Biskops-Arnö, six months ago I had agreed to give a talk there, phoned Lemhagen when I came to Stockholm and said I would have to cancel, I had nothing to talk about, he had said I could go anyway, listen to the other talks, perhaps participate in the discussions and do a reading or two in the evening, if I had anything new.
He met me outside the main building, told me without delay that he had never experienced anything like the time I had been at the seminar for debut writers, nothing even remotely near it. I understood what he meant, the atmosphere had been so special then, not only for me.
The lectures were boring and the discussions tedious, or else it was just that I was too happy to show any interest. A couple of older Icelandic men were the only ones with anything original to say, so they were also the ones who had to face the strongest arguments. At night we drank, Henrik Hovland was there and entertained us with stories of life under canvas, one he told us was about how after a certain number of days the smell of your shit became so strong and individual that you could smell your way to each other in the dark, like animals, which no one believed, but everyone laughed, while I described the fantastic scene from one of Arild Rein’s books where the protagonist shits such a large turd that it can’t be flushed, so he takes it, puts it into the pocket of his suit jacket and goes out wearing it.
The next day two Danes arrived, Jeppe and Lars; Jeppe’s talk was good, and they were great drinking company. They travelled back with me to Stockholm, we went on the booze, I texted Linda, she met us at Kvarnen, embraced me when she arrived, we laughed and chatted, but suddenly my spirits sank, for Jeppe was charismatic, more than usually intelligent and had a strong masculine presence, by which Linda was not unaffected, I sensed. Perhaps that was why I started a discussion with her. Of all the subjects to choose I chose abortion. It didn’t seem to bother her, but she went home afterwards, while we continued, ending up going to a nightclub where Jeppe was refused admittance, it must have been something to do with the plastic bag he was carrying, his worn appearance and the fact that he was very drunk. We went back to my place instead, Lars fell asleep, Jeppe and I sat up, the sun rose, he told me about his father, a good person in all ways, and when he said he was dead, a tear ran down his cheek. It was one of those moments that will live long in the memory, perhaps because the confidence came without warning. There was just his head resting against the wall, illuminated by the first soft light of morning, the tear running down his cheek.