Now and then, I say. But it’s quite a while since I have.
People ought to watch Norway Countrywide, says Düsseldorf.
Very true, I say. It’s a good local affairs programme.
It’s about us people, says Düsseldorf. It’s about you and me.
That’s right, I say. It’s about Norwegian people. And about Norwegian animals, too, for that matter. In fact, maybe it’s especially about the interaction between Norwegian people and Norwegian animals.
But it’s friendly, Düsseldorf says. It’s a friendly programme.
Was there anything in particular that made an impression on you? I ask.
Düsseldorf silently nods his head.
There were two things, he says. First there was something about a Finnish woman who, in her youth, had worked as a nurse somewhere in southern Finland. On her first holiday she decided to hitch-hike to the north to look at a church she had seen a picture of in one of her school books when she was a child. That church had stuck in her mind. She thought it was beautiful and she wanted to see it, so she set off hitching. She was advised to take a bus for the last stretch and for a long time she was the only passenger on the bus, but then along came a young Norwegian and he asked if he could sit next to her. Even though the bus was virtually empty, he asked if he could sit down beside her. And they began to talk and one thing led to another and she dropped the visit to the church and went back with him to his home in Finnmark where they got married and had children and all that kind of thing, and fifty years passed. In the story on TV she took the bus back to see the Finnish church. She was so happy to be able to go there. She had her husband with her. Both of them were still alive and they were so fond of each other and at last she got to see the church that had held such an attraction for her and which was the reason why her life had turned out the way it did. I don’t know why it made such an impression on me, says Düsseldorf, trying to pretend that there weren’t any small tears running down his cheek.
You’d been working too hard, I said. You were worn to a frazzle.
Yes, says Düsseldorf. But even so.
I know what he means. There can be something reconciling about a good story on Norway Countrywide. If you’re in the right frame of mind you can become attached to those people struggling with their problems, and who are pleasant, and helpless. And, not only that, the programme tells you that it’s fine to be different, as long as you’re also Norwegian. We’re Norwegian and different, all of us. And since everybody is different, in a way it’s normal to be different, so the conclusion must be that none of us is different. Just Norwegian.
And the other thing? I ask.
There was a young man from Vestland, he says. He had learned virtually all the national anthems in the world all on his own. And there was something unsettling about it all, but the people around him accepted him and thought he was clever. His classmates drew scraps of paper out of a cup and on them were written the names of various countries whose anthems he then performed, in the original language, and moreover in quite a different, and therefore especially moving voice. That young man decided me to take the barrel out of my mouth and the cartridge out of the chamber, Düsseldorf says. And ever since, I’ve just looked to the future. Dad can fend for himself. I’ve finished with him. One of these days I’m going to clear away the whole village. I’ve had enough. And I’m actually wondering whether to ring that man up and ask him if he would be interested in taking a cruise up the western coast with me this summer. Then we could have a closer look at this elongated country of ours, and I could get to learn some good national anthems. It feels like it’s an opportunity I shouldn’t pass up.
You know what will happen if I ring Norway Countrywide and tell them about you? I say.
Düsseldorf shakes his head and looks at me, eyes agog. They’ll be out here like bats out of hell, I say. They’ll come with blue lights flashing. It’s perfect TV material. Son of a German soldier who didn’t have the easiest start in life and has now spent years constructing a model of the Belgian village at the time when his father was shot during the Ardenne offensive in 1944, a model which is so accurate as to be verging on the mentally insane, and who on top of that, in his darkest hour, is saved by a Norway Countrywide story, and then ends up in beautiful Norwegian cruise-liner landscape with a former Norway Countrywide star. That’s as good as it gets. And if you can slip in that a friend of yours who lives in the forest with his moose occasionally drops by, then it’s a prize at Montreux and all the other TV awards ceremonies festivals, but that won’t happen, I say, because Bongo and I don’t want to be on TV, but you might very well be, and if you want I can give them a ring.
Can you? Düsseldorf says.
If that’s what you yourself want, I say.
I think maybe I do, he says.
Then I’ll ring, I say, getting to my feet. I find the number in the directory and ask the NRK switchboard to put me through to Norway Countrywide. There I leave a message informing them who Düsseldorf is and what he has done that might be of interest to them and tell them where they can contact him when they get to work next morning. I don’t lay it on thick, just present it as it is; from my own experience I know that short and sweet always works best when it comes to the crunch and that the fine folk who work at Norway Countrywide are sure to know that perfectly well.
I carry on carving. Now it’s my father’s turn. I soon give up any idea of creating a close resemblance between my father’s actual appearance and my totem pole representation of him. It will be a stylised and simplified version of my father, but of course it’s the symbolism that counts here. He’ll also be considerably larger than he was in real life. Four metres in sitting position would correspond to about eight metres standing, I would think, and my father was nowhere near that size. He was average height, not physically striking in any way. I am enlarging him, one might say. I’m making him bigger than he was.
One morning while we’re having breakfast, I hear sounds near the tent. I peer out and see a dog I recognise. It’s Reactionary Dog, and, quick as a flash, I work out that the reactionary can’t be far away. I grab my bow and a good arrow and squat down on my haunches in the tent opening. Eventually I see his shape looming in the undergrowth. He’s skiing and has donned his Sunday breeches, even though it isn’t Sunday, and he’s carrying a fairly voluminous rucksack on his back.
Halt, Reactionary Man! I shout, drawing my bow.
He raises his arm and says something I don’t catch, but which I later learn was: I come in peace. But, as I say, I don’t catch it and therefore choose to interpret it as a threat that before very long he will be ringing his friend Løvenskiold, notifying him about my trespassing and telling Løvenskiold to send in his henchmen to pull down my tent and kick me out of the forest. And that must not happen. I can’t accept that. I’m raising a totem pole in honour of my father and I have to protect both my own and my father’s interests. I draw the bow and again tell him to stop, but he doesn’t.
Now you’re for it, I shout and let fly with an arrow. Unfortunately, I can say now in hindsight. It wasn’t a very wise thing to have done. For the arrow is sticking out of the reactionary’s thigh, and he falls to the ground. It’s easy to be wise after the event, of course I shouldn’t have done it, but I was scared and had been provoked and therefore made a mistake. It’s not uncommon for people to do that sort of thing. It’s happened before and it will happen again. The slightest complaint to Løvenskiold and I would have had to leave my beloved forest, and Bongo, and the totem pole, forever, and I couldn’t bear the thought of that, so I let fly at him. In any case I never thought I would hit him. But I hit him smack in the thigh. He’s lying in the snow, writhing about down in the undergrowth. Is it my problem? I ask myself, and soon realise that yes, indeed it is, so I run through the deep snow and make contact.
I’m very sorry, I say. But I didn’t think I would hit you. He’s not in any condition to talk to or forgive anyone. He just lies there in the snow
groaning, stunned and annoyed. I remove his rucksack and drag him back with me to the tent and lay him in front of the fire. There I pull out the arrow, clean the wound with vodka and dress it with strips of cloth I tear off a shirt. The reactionary says nothing and eventually falls asleep, and I go out to continue my carving, while Bongo and the reactionary dog get chummy. I like the unsentimental manner in which I have tackled the situation. By rights I suppose I should have called in the health authorities, but I can sense I’m planning to try to persuade him to let it remain an issue between him and me. There would soon be complications if I lifted him onto Bongo’s back and went down to the Rikshospital. Down there they would start asking questions, and the upshot might be that my anonymous forest existence would be compromised. Maybe the forces of law and order would also get wind of the incident and, even though this can’t be the first time someone has been unfortunate enough to shoot a reactionary in the thigh, deep down I know I won’t be met by a sympathetic response with them. Fortunately, however, we are mature individuals who I am sure can solve our differences once the reactionary has had some sleep and gathered his thoughts.
Late that evening he wakes up, proffers his hand and introduces himself as Bosse Munch. Bosse, I say, savouring the word. It’s got a bloody nice ring to it. It must be part of the right-wing conspiracy, I fancy. They give the right-wing children pleasant-sounding names so that it’s easy to like them throughout their lives, in spite of their bizarre opinions and all their money. I give Bosse some water and moose meat while I clean his wound once more. It’s not as bad as I first feared. The wound is not very deep, and it doesn’t seem as if any of the vital nerves or organs have been affected. He can move all his toes and joints in the vicinity of the wound without any trouble. In other words, it was a perfect warning shot. I put the wind up him, but he won’t suffer any permanent damage.
I didn’t come to ask you to move the tent, Bosse says when he has had a little to eat and drink. I came because I’ve been doing a lot of thinking in the couple of months since I was last here.
Oh yes, I say.
For the first few days after you shouted at me I was furious and I was on the point of ringing Carl-Otto several times and getting him to demand that you remove the tent, he says. But as time went by I came to my senses and in the end I could feel myself agreeing with you. You and everyone else should have an undisputed right to take up residence in the forest, if you feel the need for it, for however long.
I’m glad you see it that way, I say.
I’m glad you’re glad, says Bosse. But it doesn’t stop there. What you said about material security and my self-satisfied smirk made me see the error of my ways and realise that it was time to change course. The kids flew the coop long ago of course and I can tell you without a word of a lie that my many directorships are just a question of marking time. The proposals from the various managing directors are accepted without question and at the board dinners, for ten or fifteen years now, we have been saying more or less the same things to each other as we have said hundreds of times before. So, to cut a long story short, I tried to get my wife to agree to us selling the house and giving some of the money away and finding something completely different to do, but she didn’t think that was a very good idea. She’s spread roots, as she puts it. We have a lovely garden, and the view, and what with one thing and another, she didn’t want to. But as the weeks passed I felt that I wasn’t finding any peace with this, and this morning I got the idea into my head that I should move out here for a while. Close to you, I thought. So that we could have a bit of a chat, maybe, and generally support each other in various ways, I imagined. I don’t know what you think to that.
Mmm, I say. Actually I settled here to get away from people a bit, so I’m afraid the quality of my project will deteriorate somewhat if our numbers out here increase. But, on the other hand, I can’t prevent you from being here, of course. It’s your forest just as much as it’s mine.
Yes, that’s true, Bosse says, sleepily reclining on the mat.
My forest, he says in his dreams as he nods off again.
After Bosse has fallen asleep I strap on skis and go off on a long tour to ponder the new situation. Can’t I even be on my own in the forest? A confused soul-searching reactionary is the last thing I need. On I go, thinking like this and getting worked up, when I meet the fifth jogger with a lamp on his forehead, and I explode. I push him into the snow and tear the lamp off his forehead, together with the absurdly heavy combi-battery pack. He has enough power to go to the North Cape, floodlit all the way. What the hell is this? I yell. What kind of a society is it we live in when a man can’t even go for an evening constitutional to turn things over in his mind without being disturbed by people tearing through the forest with lamps on their heads? I can see the tracks and the trees perfectly clearly myself. Surely you can understand that this is bound to come to a sticky end, I say. The jogger nods meekly. And that I’m going to have to confiscate this lamp as well, I say. He nods again. Good, I say. And I don’t want to see you out here with one of these lamps again. And I don’t like you running so fast, either. You’ll have to slow down a bit from now on. Have we got a deal? He confirms that we have. After that I help him to his feet and brush off a little snow here and there before sending him on his way with a friendly pat on the shoulder.
If you explain to folk why what they are doing is wrong, in an unthreatening manner, then they take heed. That’s a redeeming feature, no question. Good, old-fashioned conversation is not dead yet. And in a way it is especially good in the forest.
MARCH
It’s beginning to get crowded in the forest.
This new trend is unfortunate, to put it mildly.
I gave the reactionary the big E after a few days and expected him to trudge home again, but I was wrong. He has lived for several weeks now in a small mountain tent only a couple of hundred metres away. He’s settled in and there’s not much I can do about it. I’ve decided to continue thinking of him as the reactionary and not as Bosse. I like the distance that creates. I need that. Sadly, his wound has healed so well that he’s forever dropping in. Any old excuse will do to come over and visit me. An unending stream of things he wants to borrow, salt, knives and all sorts of odds and ends. But I’ve put my foot down and told him not to come more than two or three times a week. I can’t face any more than that. After all, he’s not exactly stimulating company. But he doesn’t take any notice. He pops by several times a day and has a great need to talk. Especially about how he has suddenly seen the light, in all its clarity, and how he’s wasted a large part of his life on trivialities, but now he’s planning to make amends. Amongst other things, he’s planning a reconciliation festival, as he calls it. I’m not quite sure what this is all about, it seems he’s going to invite representatives of various religions to a kind of party under the banner of brotherhood. He asked me whether I was interested in taking part, but I said forget it.
It’s become far more difficult to do things, and it’s become impossible to do nothing. Doing nothing is a very demanding job when other people are constantly on your back. It’s come to the point now where I’ll have to explain myself. I will have to make my position clear with regard to another person’s wishes. I’ll have to explain that I don’t want any visits. I’ll have to explain that I don’t like him and that it would suit me best if he moved back home. It’s draining me. I’m beginning to see how much easier it is not to explain anything, not to say anything, and just keep going about my business as usual. I don’t know what to do. One option, of course, would be to move farther into the forest. Take the tent and all my other stuff and one quiet night slip into the farthest depths of the forest. That would probably be the right thing to do, but I’m still hoping that the reactionary will call it a day and go back home. I try my best to freeze him out by being even more unfriendly towards him than I otherwise would have been. It’s not that I like him any less than other people I don’t like, not deep down. I just don
’t like him in a very general, indifferent sort of way. There’s nothing special about him. But now I’m focussing on not liking him, so that it will become apparent even to him, who, as I see it, hasn’t spent a lot of time in environments where people are particularly sensitive to the signals others send. But even though I treat him badly he keeps coming back. He wants to play lotto. He wants to do that every evening. He says there has been far too little fun or play in his life. When he was small, it was all about growing up, and when his children were small he was anywhere but at home, he was creating a name for himself and making money, and all that stuff.
You reap what you sow, I say.
He considers us friends and looks up to me in a disquieting way. I sense an expectation in him that I’ll be a kind of mentor to him.
I can’t imagine anything I’m less cut out to do.
I couldn’t be a mentor to anybody. Not even myself. Ending up here in the forest was in many ways more a stroke of good fortune than any act of astuteness on my part. I fell off my bike at the right place and the right time.
But the reactionary regards me as some kind of soothsayer. He doesn’t notice that I’m actually trying to get him to go home. I’m too soft-hearted.
A typical conversation with the reactionary tends to spread over several days and may develop like this:
Day 1:
I might be working on the totem pole. He mooches up and stands next to me. I say nothing. Just keep chipping away. He watches what I’m doing for a while before he says something.
Yo, Doppler, he says at length, what positive qualities can you see in me? If you had to name a few to a priest, say, who had to give a little speech at my funeral or something, the reactionary asks.