All I want is to be a human being. I just want to look at the birds and the trees and hear the children laugh. I want to be part of the world, put all fantasy behind me and just be part of it. First I must ask permission to be something as commonplace as a father to my own daughter. Perhaps she"ll see no alternative but to break off all contact with me. I wouldn"t find that hard to understand. I"m guilty, but isn"t there a slight difference between subjective and objective guilt? What I did to "Poppet" was careless, but it wasn"t wilful.
It"s turned five. I"ve no strength left. That doesn"t matter, because I"ve nothing left to defend.
The ice has begun to crack and the cold, dark depths beneath are opening up. There"ll be no more pirouettes.
From now on I must learn to swim in deep water.
Metre Man is wearing an almost solemn expression and has taken up position in front of the fireplace. It"s the first time I"ve ever seen him rest his cane on his shoulder as if it were a heavy burden. He looks up at me and says: "And now? Are we going to remember now?"
But I think it"s impossible to have a clear recollection of something that happened when I was just three years old. I look down at the diminutive figure and say: "I can"t say it with words. I"ve forgotten the language I spoke then. A small boy is calling to me in a language I no longer under- stand."
"But you remember something?" the little man asks.
"It"s like a film," I say. "It"s like a few frames of cine-film."
"We must write the synopsis of that little clip, then," Metre Man says.
I swallow. But this will be the very last synopsis, I think, as my fingers begin to tap:
Oslo in the mid-1950s, autumn. Three-year-old Petter lives in a modern block of flats with his mother and father. His father has a job in the central tram depot, and his mother works part-time at the City Hall.
Stills of family idyll, ten or twelve seconds from a picnic at Lake Sognsvann, Sunday outing to Ullevlseter etc. Stills of mother and father greeting the new neighbour on the ground floor. He"s got a Labrador.
Early morning: father and Petter are in the hall with their coats on. Mother (in her dressing-gown) emerges from the kitchen with packed lunches for both of them. She puts Petter"s inside the little blue kiddie"s satchel that hangs on his shoulder and does it up. She fondles Petter, kneels down and kisses his cheek. Mother gets up again, gives father a light kiss on the lips and hopes he"ll have a good day.
Father and Petter on the bus. Petter asks why he has to go to nursery school. Father says that he has to go to work to make sure all the trams are working properly, and mum must go to the launderette to wash clothes and visit the hairdresser"s too. Petter says that he could accompany his mother to the launderette and hairdresser, but father says that Petter has got to go to work as well. Petter"s job is to be at the nursery school and play with the other children. Father thinks a bit and then a.s.sures his son that children"s play is just as important as adults" work.
When they get to the nursery school, they find a notice pinned to the door saying that the nursery school is closed because both the nursery a.s.sistants are ill. Father reads the note out loud to Petter.
He takes his hand and says that he"ll bring him back to Mum.
They go into a delicatessen and buy fresh rolls, slices of saveloy sausage, some pickled gherkins and a hundred grams of vegetable mayonnaise. Father says that he hasn"t time to eat this lovely lunch himself, but it"s for Petter and Mum.
Father and Petter on the bus again. Both are in high spirits, Petter presses his face to the window and looks out at all the people, cars (at least one taxi), bicycles and a steam-roller (i.e. the big, wide world outside the nuclear family).
On the way from the bus stop father begins to whistle the tune "Smile" from the Chaplin film Modern Times.
They walk up the stairs of the block, Petter is looking forward to getting home to mother. Father unlocks the flat door. Mother comes rushing out of the living-room hugging her dressing-gown. She"s horrified and almost stark naked. Pandemonium.
Petter"s POV, from three feet above ground level: father and mother scream and yell and say horrible things to each other. Petter screams too, trying to drown out the grown-ups. He flees into the living-room where he finds their new neighbour getting up off the large rug. He"s got no clothes on either, they"re lying in a heap on a Persian pouffe in front of a teak shelf on which is an old radio set (Radionette), but he covers himself with a musical score (i.e. the anthology Opera Without Words).
Scene like something from the silent films, with much shouting and cursing (Petter"s PO V), but without discernible words. Mother and father have entered the living-room. Father hits mother, causing her to fall and bang her head against an old white piano. Blood begins to trickle from her mouth. The neighbour tries to intervene, but father rips the phone out of its socket and hurls it in his face.
Neighbour clutches his nose. Everyone is crying and screaming, even Petter. The only thing that can be heard is bad language, some of it very bad. Petter tries to outdo the adults by using the rudest words he knows.
Petter starts crying. He rushes out on to the landing and down to the ground floor. He goes out into the courtyard and rings all the bells, the whole time screaming: "POLICE CAR, FIRE ENGINE, AMBULANCE! POLICE CAR,.
FIRE ENGINE, AMBULANCE!".
He runs back into the lobby and down the steps to the cellar.
BOMB SHELTER is printed in green, luminous letters above the cellar door. Petter opens it and creeps behind some bicycles. He cowers there without making a sound.
Petter is still crouching behind the bikes. A long time has elapsed.
Mother comes into the cellar and finds him behind the bicycles.
Both are in floods of tears.
The boy can"t remember any more, and I can"t force him. I can"t even be sure if what the boy remembers is true.
Metre Man has dropped his cane on the floor, or perhaps he has laid down his wayfarer"s staff for good, because he doesn"t pick it up again. He just stands there staring up at me with a wistful, almost dismal air. Then he says: "We"ll say no more about it now!"
The next second he"s gone, and I know I"ll never see him again.
I"m looking down at a floor covered with tiles. They"re alternately red and olive green. I"ve begun to count them.
I"ve picked out a square of four tiles in the middle of the floor. They lie there glowing so richly on their own that they seem to outdo the rest of the floor, but they are too tedious to concentrate on for long. I isolate nine tiles, three by three is nine. This too is dull. How could nine ceramic tiles have anything to tell me? I"ve marked out a square of sixteen tiles, each individual tile is part of a greater whole.
They don"t know it themselves, but I do. It"s irrelevant anyway, because I"ve already picked out a square of twenty- five tiles. I write B, E, A, T and E on the five topmost tiles. I try to make a magic square out of the five letters. I try it with M, A, R, I and A too, but both are so complicated that I decide to postpone it until I"ve got more time.
The floor is so big that I have no difficulty in forming a square of thirty-six tiles - I only need to kick a pair of shoes out of the way. These thirty-six tiles belong to the hotel, but their deeper significance is mine. It"s unlikely that any hotel guest has noticed this harmonious square before me. It is I who have elevated it to a higher plane, to the realms of thought and contemplation. This deeper perspective is not on the floor but safely stored within my own head. The thirty-six tiles on the floor can draw an imaginary enclosure from my soul. It"s generous of me, I think, to keep track of them. I move my eyes across the thirty-six tiles, hori- zontally, vertically and diagonally. The tiles can"t feel me running over them with my eyes. I have begun to con- centrate on tile thirteen, it"s the first tile in the third row. It has a small chip in the bottom right-hand corner, but it needn"t worry about that, I think. There"s barely a tile on the floor that doesn"t have a blemish of some kind. The tiles are lying on their backs with their faces in the air, and so they can"t see one another, covering an entire floor together, but without need of any mutual relationship; at this moment their only relationship is to me, and I examine them all in turn. If I divide tile number thirteen diagonally into two equal halves, I get two right-angled triangles - isosceles triangles - though of course I haven"t touched them. I"m not the sort of person who goes round smashing up fittings, although, if I look at this tile much harder, my stare may crack it. I turn my attention again to the whole square of six times six. There"s a lot you can do with six times six ceramic floor tiles - an awful lot, I think. You can write a story about each and every one, that"s easy.
I"ve pushed a chair out of the way and can now concentrate all my attention on forty-nine tiles. I can see all the tiles at once without shifting my glance. I think I must have a special faculty for viewing ceramic tiles. I"m par- ticularly satisfied with this last block, and I"ll never forget it: seven times seven tiles is nothing less than the ultimate truth, the answer to the riddle of existence itself. The very kernel of existence is a square of forty-nine green and red tiles in Room 15 of the Hotel Luna Convento, Amalfi. I glance at the coat-stand, but I only have to turn my gaze back to the floor and I see the square again. It hasn"t budged even a millimetre, and this is patently because the shape itself is firmly rooted in my mind. It isn"t on the floor, but is created by the person who shifts his gaze. If I ever find myself in prison, I"ll never get bored while I have this square of forty- nine tiles to think back on. I have glimpsed the world. If I draw an invisible diagonal line from the top right-hand corner, from the top corner of tile number seven, down to the bottom left-hand corner of tile forty-three, it gives me the two right-angled triangles already described. It"s just the same as dividing a single tile, because a square is always a square. Each of the triangles has two legs seven tiles long.
The sum of the lengths of each cathetus squared is ninety- eight tile lengths, but I"m not capable of working out the square root of ninety-eight. I"ve been to my cabin bag to fetch my pocket calculator: the square root of ninety-eight is 9.8994949 tile lengths. So now we know, but it seems odd that the diagonal of seven times seven tiles can be such an ugly figure. It might almost be called an ambush, but then chaos has always had a particular talent for destroying the cosmos from within. But now there"s something that doesn"t add up, something haunting the tiles - and of course, it"s the spirit hovering over the tiles that"s doing the haunting - but I can"t divide forty-nine by two, so how can half the tiles be red and half green? I feel confused, I"ve begun to doubt my own sanity.
I am saved by an even higher order, a square of sixty-four tiles. I had only to push Ibsen"s desk out of the way, though it was heavy and made a noise like thunder, and it is the middle of the night, too. Eight eights are sixty-four, no doubt about it. Now there are thirty-two red and thirty-two green tiles in the square and, without lifting a finger, I"ve established perfect harmony, I"ve re-established complete equilibrium between red and green, green and red. I can play chess now, too. Perhaps that was the idea all along. I"m good at playing chess against myself, and I"m good at playing without chessmen and have always been: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth rank. I place the white pieces on the first rank: a, b, c, d, e, f, g and h. It"s easy, I"ve got a full view of the whole board, I can see all the squares at once. One at a time I place the pieces on the board. Soon I can see them all quite clearly, they are made of black and white alabaster and are quite large. The biggest ones, the kings and queens, are over thirty centimetres tall.
I"m the white king and I"m in the first row. I"m shown to a red seat - 1E it says on my ticket, a fine seat in the first row of the stalls, I deserve no less. On the great stage before me are ranged all the other p.a.w.ns and pieces. I find the crowded lists of my own p.a.w.ns in front of me slightly vexing.
They"re much too close and smelly, but far off to the left I glimpse the black queen. She"s far away on 8D, she"s also got a red tile to stand on - a good position as well, I think. I wave at her with my left arm, and she waves discreetly back.
She"s got a crown on her head, it sparkles in the purest gold.
The chessman have taken their places, and now the game itself begins. I commence with an ordinary king"s p.a.w.n opening: e2-e4, and she responds equally properly with e7- e5. I move my knight to protect the p.a.w.n: b1-c3. Then she makes a surprising move, she moves the queen from d8 to f6, but why? She"s combative, she"s daring! I move my p.a.w.n from d2 to d3 to protect the p.a.w.n at e4, and she ripostes by moving her bishop, f8-c5. What plan has the lady got up her sleeve? I move my knight again, c3-d5, and threaten her queen. I do it in order to try to force her to retreat. It"s then that it happens, and without my being able to retrieve the situation: the queen comes up and takes a p.a.w.n, f6 takes f2.
The black queen is at close quarters, holding me in check.
She smells of plums and cherries, but I can"t touch her, that"s the terrible thing. I"ve committed the worst sin in the chess- player"s book, I"ve not seen beyond the next move, and I"ve not kept account of previous moves in the game. I"ve for- gotten that the queen has a past, she"s of n.o.ble lineage, her house is full of silk, and now she has a clandestine bishop on the diagonal from C5 and, in this moment of truth, it is he who prevents the queen from being taken. It"s check- mate!
It was a short game, far too short. I was pinned in a corner by the black queen and my game is lost. I"m guilty, not wilfully, but through gross negligence. I"m ashamed. That"s the answer, I"m ashamed. And I - who have always pointed out that shame is no longer an element in people"s lives - I go off and commit the most outrageous misdeed that any man can be guilty of.
I lay down and have managed to sleep for a couple of hours.
When I opened my eyes it was like waking up to the very first, or the very last, day of my life. I had such a beautiful dream about a little girl who came walking towards me with a big posy of babies" slippers. It was by Lake Sognsvann, or in Sweden by one of the big lakes there. But it was only a dream.
I am at my desk once more, it"s nine o"clock. I"ve done my packing and I"ll go down and check out in a couple of minutes. If Beate won"t let me leave my cabin bag in her bed-sit, I"ll ask if I can deposit it at the police station. I won"t leave it at the hotel whatever I do. I"m not the sort who returns to collect things.
I feel something important is missing. Then I realise what it is: when and where was I supposed to meet Beate? We never arranged anything. All the same, I must get out of here, I must escape from my own consciousness.
I"ll leave my laptop in the room. I"ll lose it here or leave it here, people can wonder which. I"ve deleted all files that needed deleting, but not the ones that are meant to remain.
There are lots of them, an impressive number. There are more than enough synopses and ideas for people to help themselves to, enough for several dozen literary careers, maybe more. I can stick a note to the machine saying that it belongs to all the authors of the world. I could write: here you are, help yourselves, everything is gratis. Then they could do whatever they liked with it, they could just carry on as far as I"m concerned, they could just carry on dis- porting themselves.
But I change my mind. I write TO BEATE on a yellow note and stick it to the machine. For my part, I have no desires other than to be an ordinary person. I only want to look at the birds and trees and to hear children laugh.
Someone is knocking at my door. "Just a moment," I call out, then I hear Beate"s voice. She says she"ll wait for me down by the convent gardens.
It is the first, or the last, day of my life. I don"t know if I dare hope for a miracle. I"ll save this and sign off. Everything is ready. Ready for the greatest leap.
[DUST COVER].
Jostein Gaarder was a teacher for many years before he began to write full-time. He lives in Oslo with his wife. They have two grown-up sons.