Shyness And Dignity (15 page)

But she did show him much kindness, just as he had tried to rise above his ingrained social suffering and show her both respect and kindness. Though they might be moving about in separate worlds, it was in one and the same apartment, and the things that were there they shared, and they associated under these circumstances without colliding but moved past each other in their separate orbits, without the other’s presence being felt as an intrusion, a disturbance, or as unpleasant. She would also sometimes suddenly break out of her friendly orbit and turn to him in complete confidence. She had turned forty-seven this autumn, and he was, until today, a senior master, now fifty-three. She took him into her confidence, which gave him a glimpse of the most intimate aspects of her life. She initiated him into her bodily afflictions and, while doing so, pointed at the spots where her afflictions manifested themselves on her body. When she sat thus, half naked, pointing at her varicose veins, she was anything but an elegant lady – that she became only when she put on her blue jeans, which made her look round, or her grey suit and her high-heeled shoes. But she gave him a glimpse of this body of hers with the utmost confidence and naturalness. At those moments he was her husband. Without worrying about the decline that had taken place in her body with regard to voluptuousness, sensuality, etc., she displayed it to him, only to him, as the only eyewitness, while chattering innocently about what bothered her. To Elias this was painful. She was a trifle fat. Flabby. Elias Rukla felt acute pain as he listened to what she was telling him. Pointing at her decaying body,
she
told him how much her varicose veins bothered her. In a voice that Elias Rukla remembered as it had always addressed him and which, as he remembered, he had felt a special pleasure listening to when he called her on the telephone. They say that even voices change, so that, when you talk to a stranger on the telephone, you can without difficulty determine the person’s age; but that doesn’t hold true for those we know. If life had turned out differently and Johan Corneliussen and Eva Linde (plus little Camilla) had left for America together in 1974 and remained there, and then had come home for a brief visit after about twenty years and Elias Rukla was to meet them, say, in the lobby of the Hotel Continental, he would have thought, on seeing Eva, That is Eva Linde, but how she has faded! But if instead they had called him and he, after first talking to Johan Corneliussen, got Eva Linde on the line and heard her voice, then he would have thought, Eva! Because he would immediately have recognised her voice, so clear, but with a peculiarly husky undertone, a hoarseness at the lower end of the vocal cords, as though she had a permanent cold, and he would at once have visualised Eva the way he, in this instance, remembered her from the last time he saw her, in May 1974. And it was exactly that voice which Eva spoke with now, as she sat there half naked, displaying the varicose veins on the legs of her rather flaccid body. At that moment he felt a great tenderness for her. Eva! Eva! he thought, standing motionless beside her as this tenderness overwhelmed him. He could probably have expressed this tenderness for Eva, and perhaps he even ought to have done so, but
he
could not have expressed what was the basis of the tenderness he was now feeling for the somewhat well-filled-out Eva Linde, his wife, because she was unconcerned about, maybe puzzled by, perhaps even averse to that basis, and that way she was also, no doubt, unconcerned about, maybe puzzled by, even perhaps averse to his real feelings for her altogether, Elias Rukla had thought.

Her indifference towards him. It never failed to occupy him. Her possible indifference towards him. For although she showed him the most profound confidence, all but innocent in its sincerity, there was always a possible indifference in everything she did vis-à-vis her husband. How could she not let it worry her that her beauty was gone! Had it not occurred to her that now Elias Rukla was losing the very thing which had drawn him towards her? Even if that were not true, she must nevertheless have feared in her heart that this was the case. That what had attracted Elias to her was about to disappear, for good. It must at any rate have occurred to her, like a shadow across her face at least, but he never saw a hint of such a shadow. That she could take it so lightly! As a liberation on her part, whereby, however, she shut herself up towards him. Did she not understand that? He hoped she did not understand it, that it was so remote from her range of ideas that the thought had not even occurred to her, for if that was not the case, and she knew it, and still was not troubled by it, then it must mean that, to her, it did not matter very much whether he loved her or not and that, in a sense, it had never mattered, but that she was still grateful because, at a time when she was
hard
-pressed, she could come to him and stay there. Was that the truth of the matter? Because of thoughts like this, Eva Linde continued to appear as an enigmatic, even provocative, woman to Elias Rukla. This rather plump lady with whom he shared bed and board, but who had never opened her innermost self to him and who had not let him in either, with
his
innermost self, his burning questions, neither then nor now, when they were burnt-out questions. And it was her he was thinking of now, standing at the Bislett traffic circle, his hand bloody (ridiculous) from the ribs of the umbrella and himself at his wits’ end, not knowing which way to turn as he stood in the light rain that made little splashes of mud for the passing cars. The disaster had occurred. He knew that the principal would attempt to trivialise the whole affair and have the support of the faculty, who would attempt to persuade him to continue by saying that this was something that could have happened to anyone. But it had not happened to just anyone. It had happened to him, and for him it meant that he had fallen out. Fallen out of society, quite simply. He knew he would never again set foot in Fagerborg Secondary School. Not in any other school either, in his capacity as a teacher. How, then, would she who was his wife be able to cope? She who had just started a three-year education at the College of Social Affairs and depended on his income? For this means it’s all over, he thought. It is dreadful, but there is no going back.