Dag Solstad - Novel 11, Book 18

In truth, he had been ill at ease with her eager support of his project to undertake this big effort. There was something about her loyalty that had a suffocating effect on him. It bound her to him at a time when Bjørn Hansen was about to break away. Because Turid Lammers had faded. She had turned forty-four, and it had long been clear that the ravages of the years had left their mark on her face and body. Her face had become sharp, scraped, hard. How he missed the softness of it! But that was gone for ever, and along with it many of the ideas on which Bjørn Hansen had built his whole way of life. He had made his home here. At Kongsberg. Alongside Turid Lammers. He had left everything behind, because he was afraid he would regret it all his life if he chose not to pursue the temptation that emanated from her body and face. Now this face and this body offered nothing but memories of something that had been lost forever, making the whole situation unendurable. He had suspected this for a long time.

Turid Lammers was still the natural centre of her and Bjørn Hansen’s milieu. The circle around the Kongsberg Theatre Society was fairly close, and its core consisted on the whole of the same individuals as when Bjørn Hansen had moved here twelve years ago, though there had been a few changes. Some had dropped out, others had joined. Like the old-timers, the new members also learned to treat Turid Lammers as the natural centre. But she was so in a different way than before, both to the veterans, whether they realised it or not, and to the new arrivals. They constantly crowded around her table, which was still placed slightly off centre, but whereas these meetings always used to end with one man sitting alone with her, in a (to him) dizzying tête-à-tête — although he (and the others) knew it meant nothing except that he was sitting there at that moment and couldn’t hope for anything to happen, yet found it to be enough, yes, enough — now when Bjørn Hansen showed up to suggest that they should go home, there were occasionally two or three gentlemen at her table, engaged in relaxed and cheerful conversation, sometimes also other groupings, like one man and two women (besides Turid), or two men and two women, etc., etc. And while previously the men had looked at her, now they were content to talk about her, albeit with great admiration. Well, they also spoke directly to her, with open admiration for what she stood for, what she was, and for the importance of what she was doing, and not least for what she had done for the Kongsberg Theatre Society. They showered her with compliments, both men and women, old and new members. They also addressed themselves to Bjørn Hansen, her life partner. They let Bjørn Hansen know what a ravishing woman Turid Lammers was. What enthusiasm! What daring! At the outset Bjørn Hansen felt slightly bewildered as he looked into the honest eyes of a thirty-year-old engineer who had just let him know what a ravishing woman Turid Lammers was. So capable! Some also said she was courageous. And fun. And how youthful she was, mentally.

Bjørn Hansen had to stand listening to all of this, not without being struck by a terrible feeling of loneliness. Though they may not themselves have noticed, Bjørn Hansen understood that they were reacting to the established fact that the years had left their traces on his companion’s face and that consequently they could speak about her in a manner that consigned her enchantment to a bygone chapter of her and the circle’s history, and that it was nothing to make a fuss about. He felt abandoned by them. They were people at play, paying homage to Miss Lammers, praising her for her hairdo, her pretty dresses, her importance to the milieu, to maintaining solidarity and enthusiasm, but they did so with a light touch, playfully light. This in spite of having discovered that she had faded. But it did not matter to them; the years pass, as we all know, and with a shrug they left it to Bjørn Hansen to live with her from day to day, now as before.

And Turid behaved as before. She was the same as ever. Made the same well-known acquired French gestures and was still able to draw a man irresistibly to her with her eyes, to be with him now, in the present moment, the two of them only. She was far from without charm and still knew the basic rules of how to attract a man’s attention. But no man was as interested as before in being attracted. If he belonged to the old innermost core, he appeared to join in the game, but grew theatrical, producing a comical, if not pathetic effect. The new men felt embarrassed. They had learned to respect her as an outstanding drama teacher, but they did not know how to react to her unaffected, ingratiating manner, having the effect of an invitation, which in the past they would not have been able to tear themselves away from to save their lives. Previously everyone had known that Turid Lammers, although she flirted, never gave way and remained faithful (to Bjørn), but all the same they found her so attractive that they acted towards her as if they were in the midst of their life’s adventure. Now, however, the new men’s suspicion was aroused when she flirted. They actually believed that she was coming on to them and tried to make their getaway. Bjørn Hansen had observed this time and again. Even at home, in the Lammers villa. Turid Lammers had always dragged men home to rehearse songs. Bjørn Hansen would come home from the Treasury in the afternoon and hear charming operetta melodies through the door of the room with the piano in it, then enter to find Turid Lammers with a male member of the Society. Now as before he could see how coquettishly Turid Lammers behaved, with her attempts at direct eye contact, at closeness — by, for example, patting the man lovingly on the sleeve of his jacket to achieve intimacy, an old trick she had, or a habit — but now the years had gone by and, radiant with joy, the thirty-year-old engineer welcomed Bjørn Hansen as his rescuer, gushed about how much theatre meant to him, to his self-realisation in a hard and materialistic world of computers, grabbed his sheet music from the stand on the piano and rushed out of the door. Bjørn Hansen was left standing there, helpless, alone with his Turid. How he would have wished that this engineer had been so engrossed by Turid Lammers as she sat before the piano, tossing her head back as she looked him straight in the face, that, still bewildered and ecstatic because she had lightly brushed the sleeve of his jacket with her fingers, he had not realised that he, Bjørn Hansen, had entered the room — or, if he had noticed, had pretended not to have noticed in order to savour his last few stolen moments with this woman! If he had done so, Bjørn Hansen would not now have stood there so terribly lonely with Turid Lammers, seeing clearly how her small double chin, her distinct wrinkles, and the dry skin of her formerly soft arms had removed her for good from him.

And Turid? Did she not understand? That it was over for good? She must have understood, but she did not turn a hair. Even when a thirty-year-old engineer, who felt the greatest enthusiasm for her as a drama teacher, rushed out of the door, gratefully seizing the opportunity to dash off, she did not turn a hair. True enough, they both felt a bit embarrassed, but they acted as if nothing had happened. What could they do? Turid Lammers chose to act as before. As the centre. It was actually easy for her, because in these twelve years she had, after all, had one man only, namely him, Bjørn Hansen. Was that why she suddenly, and so surprisingly, supported him when he wanted Kongsberg’s avatars of homo ludens to perform Ibsen instead of musicals? She must have suspected that he had long ago given up every idea of belonging to a circle of homo ludens types, and that the sense of estrangement he felt at being in a chorus and singing operetta tunes had become so great that he wanted to break with the illusion, which had lasted for more than a decade of his one and only life. He knew that his proposal, if it were carried out and went well, would mean that the Kongsberg Theatre Society would be divided between those who wanted to continue with what Bjørn Hansen had called ‘big efforts’ and those who would like to continue to express themselves rhythmically and musically, in an everlastingly popular vein. She absolutely preferred the latter, but she sided with Bjørn and went in for Ibsen. While she acted just as before, as a centre, though conscious of the fact that it was over. After all, she looked at her face without make-up in the mirror every morning. Was that why she constantly returned to the notion, vis-à-vis other women, that she had never felt as young as now, because when she was young she had lacked the courage to be young, and, vis-à-vis Bjørn and other men, that, inside, she was still a young girl? He was supported, that is, by a woman who maintained, like a magic incantation, that she was still a young girl inside, although, Bjørn thought (brutally, he thought), this was obvious to nobody any more. Perhaps she believed one could sense it from her movements, which were still vigorous, due to lots of training and skill (but quite without grace); if measured against grace, they failed and became the shrill and pathetic movements that a woman in her forties makes in order to imitate her lost youth — could she not see that? Or regarding her fictitious longings when she patted the sleeve of a man’s jacket just as she had done in the springtime of her life, must not the man conclude from the gesture to its source, she no doubt thought, though of no avail, a no avail, however, that she could not accept. But she realised she had lost. Therefore she supported Bjørn Hansen. But it was too late. He was glad, of course, to have her support, because it obviously increased the chances that his idea of the big effort might be realised, but also because it hinted that their relationship could continue, calmly and resignedly, grounded in loyalty and not in the beauty we pursue — well, he tried to see it like that in any case. But at the same time he also saw the other thing. His terrible loneliness living with a faded beauty. A woman the others gladly left to him, after showering her with non-committal, though sincere, compliments. It’s good we have Turid, they must have thought, and good we have Bjørn, who has undertaken to live with her, right close to her. Bjørn Hansen was bothered by the hard features of Turid’s face, the taut lines, without softness, which were accompanied to excess by a glaringly contrasting sudden cry or peep: ‘I’m still a young girl inside, I’ve never been as young as now,’ which made a thirty-year-old engineer wash his hands of them and, relieved, rush out of the door when Bjørn turned up at last and could carry out his matrimonial obligation, take care of her, keep her for himself, so that he, the engineer, with his whole life ahead of him, could rush out of the door, liberated from the terrible prospect of ending up in her withered arms, the arms in which Bjørn Hansen still found himself, because of events that had taken place twelve years ago.