Dag Solstad - Novel 11, Book 18

For it happened that Turid Lammers began to come home in the early morning hours in much the same way, after a rehearsal which she (but not he) had attended, and it also happened that she very reluctantly broke away from a rehearsal they had both attended, or after a party, of which there were many in the circle around the Society, to return home with him because he wanted to leave (but not she), because she was all sparkle sitting in her stage outfit with some man, a genuine and self-important homo ludens who now, inspired by her presence, put on a performance in which he pushed himself to the limit, with a self-taught text conceived on the spur of the moment, which now collapsed, of course, since she had to get up and go home with her partner, because the Treasury opened at nine in the morning and for some incomprehensible reason everything would grind to a halt if the treasurer hadn’t had enough sleep, the number of hours determined arbitrarily by the treasurer himself. Incomprehensible. Kongsberg Secondary School, after all, continued to function even if Miss Lammers went straight to her teacher’s desk from a party at the Society, a fact sufficiently proven by the diplomas awarded to her pupils. Well, even the florist’s shop of the Lammers sisters opened punctually at nine in the morning, and the saleswomen would, as a matter of fact, all be there, and the customers would not stay away even if the youngest Lammers sister had danced through the night, until the crack of dawn, instead of having been suddenly interrupted and dragged home by a jealous partner. On such occasions Bjørn Hansen walked beside her, as stiff as a poker. But he believed her assurances that his fear of losing her was completely groundless.

Why, then, did he get jealous? Why did he walk home from a party as stiff as a poker beside her? Why did he sometimes tremble with suppressed fury once the members of the merry Theatre Society had left the Lammers villa after a party, and scream out his real message to her, his feeling that now he had lost her, forever? It happened time and again. Turid Lammers as a dazzling focal point. The circle lost in admiration around her. Among them her partner, Bjørn Hansen. That Turid was at the centre of things did not mean that she sat in the middle, quite the contrary, because part of Turid Lammers’s charm was also her modesty. Not only did she leave the principal roles to others, she also left the geometrical midpoint to others; she herself felt happiest at the small tables on the periphery, where she was first surrounded by both men and women, then by three or, alternatively, two men, until finally she was alone with one man, who immediately launched into his self-taught script as if for the first time — a teacher educated at Eik Teachers College who was now performing the scintillating script of how he had been cast under a spell in the mountainous Kongsberg area, because at long last he had acquired the sort of audience every amateur actor desires for his monologue, ever ready to be delivered: two starry eyes, waiting lips, a woman with French gestures, at once distant and approachable, and he did not notice that this secret monologue, to be privately performed for her alone, at a discreet side table, turned into a crowd scene in which he, as the lone walk-on, represented them all, on their knees in front of the admired Turid Lammers. Wasn’t everyone now casting sidelong glances at Bjørn Hansen? No, as the years went by, only new members shot sidelong glances his way, at first. But not later. For everyone learned that Turid Lammers was faithful to her Bjørn, which didn’t lessen their admiration for her, at the same time as she let herself be unrestrainedly admired, even conquered, by a chosen one who sat spellbound at her table, although even he knew that he would in the end get up and go home, alone. (Or, if not, at any rate sleep alone, for Turid Lammers always left the chosen one’s house or flat or rented room without allowing herself to be kissed passionately, but at most gently and sweetly, as she sometimes admitted openly to Bjørn, although the whole night might pass before that happened.) And Bjørn Hansen knew this. Which was why he could maintain his mask. But no sooner had the Society’s members left the house than he blew his top, allowing all his jealousy to emerge. Turid Lammers thought so anyway. In reality it was nothing but a pretence on his part. He did it for her sake.

For he did not dare entertain the thought that Turid might display all of her feminine charm vis-à-vis the evening’s chosen member of the Society without her partner becoming beside himself with jealousy. He could not bear the thought of causing her so much pain. Because what would happen then? Well, after Jan has been courting her for three hours, he gets up and leaves, together with the other guests. She is alone. Her husband is reading a novel in an adjacent room and now he comes to her and asks in a friendly voice, ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Then he might as well have packed his belongings and moved. Out of the Lammers villa. Away from Kongsberg. What bound them to one another would have been lost.

So Bjørn Hansen watched his beloved. His mind darkened by jealousy, he watched her as she sat chatting with Deputy Judge Stabenfeldt or the theatre-mad Per Brønnum, who was a regular worker she flirted with for a while, and with whom she also spent hours at night in her coquettish way in his condemned flat in the centre of Old Kongsberg. But actually Bjørn didn’t care. He didn’t believe that Turid Lammers was cheating on him — couldn’t, in fact, picture it to himself in his wildest dreams; if she did, she would have told him straight out.

Yet he would have fits of jealousy, in which he showed her all the classic signs. And he was not just pretending, but felt the dark recesses of jealousy inside himself — a deep sense of being forsaken and a dark rage, repulsion and rejection, all of which streamed through him, darkly and deeply and quiveringly. But it was only play-acting. He was observing himself coldly all the time as he paced the floor, showering her in his despair with accusations that she accepted with a show of emotion. This was his way of keeping her afloat. His way of worshipping the very ground she trod on.

That is, he was in the know. He knew what he was doing. He had made up his mind to live with Turid Lammers at Kongsberg. As the Kongsberg town treasurer. In his leisure time he was involved in amateur theatre. His love for her was so great that he could have gone mad out of jealousy. Had he not renounced everything in order to cultivate the temptation in all its intensity, for what was left, after all, except this intensity? But he was in the know. He knew what he was doing. He fully realised that, after living with Turid for seven years, his chief contribution to preserving their relationship consisted in these outbursts of fake jealousy. He had seen through her. He had no illusions about her.

Life. He had lived with Turid Lammers for seven years and soon would be forty, a middle-aged man. What had he got out of his life? He was the town treasurer at Kongsberg, which was something. He had become convinced that he possessed some talent as an amateur actor, and for six evenings in the autumn he trod the boards at the Kongsberg Cinema and felt the joy of it. Oh yes, he felt the joy of it. It was a strange, deep feeling. After seven years as Turid Lammers’s partner in the Lammers villa he knew everything about the joy of intoning, along with two teachers and Dr Schiøtz at the hospital, the same stanza at exactly the same time, in precisely the same tone of voice, while all four of them stamped their left feet on the floor with exactly the same force in precisely the same moment in the heated atmosphere of the stage of the Kongsberg Cinema, standing in the spotlight and before the compact public in the darkness out there, down there. A shudder through your body, the sensual pleasure of the precision. In the dark out there, those thousand mouths, those two thousand eyes hidden in the dark watching them all, including the four walk-ons, who were showing what they were capable of. Yes, he really liked it, to step forward in this way, in addition to helping to see through an entire production by being part of a team. But was it really life? This was what Bjørn Hansen asked himself as he more and more often sought refuge among his books, where he could breathe, and brood. Who was Turid Lammers? She saw that Bjørn Hansen was asking himself questions and burning the midnight oil, and she wanted to share his books but noticed that he was not particularly eager to do so. She, too, was approaching forty, but she was still capable of twisting a man round her little finger, as they say.