Armand V Read online

  But lately he had renewed his familiarity with this vanished neighborhood of the capital. Once a month he would stroll along Kirkeveien, taking the sidewalk along the right side, between the Majorstua intersection and Suhms Gate — the detour to his son’s place, as he called it. Once a month he visited the apartment building where his son rented a room and was let in to the apartment by the old landlady, paying her the rent for his son who had now become a soldier. The old widow preferred that the rent be paid in person, and not through the bank, because then she could receive the rent in cash and sign the son’s rent book that his father would hand to her after paying the required amount. Then Armand would take his leave, after first casting a glance at the closed door of his son’s room, and after listening to hear whether there was any noise coming from inside. He always paid on the first of each month unless it fell on a weekend, when he would pay on the last Friday of the previous month, because he didn’t think it fitting to pay the rent to the old widow on weekends. Even though he wouldn’t run into his son, whom he figured would be on leave on the weekends, he harbored a small hope of seeing him on a Friday, if he visited the old woman on a Friday afternoon when the first of the month fell on a Saturday or Sunday. If it fell on a Monday, he made sure to bring the rent payment to her early in the morning, in the faint hope that his son would head back to base from his weekend leave sometime on Monday, and maybe he hadn’t left his room yet — so far this had never happened.

  Armand had a job that made it possible for him to take care of personal errands during what were considered normal working hours as long as he adhered to the agreements and obligations he had signed on to when he took the job. For the past year he’d been walking a lot, or combining riding the tram with walking whenever he had to go somewhere instead of taking his car; this was also true when he had errands to run other than stopping to drop off his son’s monthly rent for the old landlady. If he left from his office building he would take the subway from the National Theater station to Majorstua and walk from there to his son’s rented room. He would cross the Majorstua intersection until he reached the Thune goldsmith shop, then walk up the right side of Kirkeveien toward the stoplight at Suhms Gate. Then he would head into this now unfamiliar and long-gone neighborhood of the capital which still triggered such clear memories from the time when he was a university student, and where he now proceeded up to Suhms Gate, while as a student he had walked in the opposite direction, on the other side of Kirkeveien, most often with others, preferably in the midst of a flock of students hurrying along, and he, like they, would glance over to the other side of Kirkeveien, where he was walking right now along the almost deserted sidewalk, past the cheap imitations of big-city streets. When he reached the stoplight at Suhms Gate he turned right, though he could have turned in that direction long before and followed Hammerstads Gate almost straight to the apartment building where his son rented a room, but he chose every time to walk up to the stoplight at Suhms Gate and then turn right, going all the way to Schultz’ Gate and then back down to the area where his son’s rented room was located, a considerable detour. This right side of Kirkeveien, from the Majorstua intersection to the stoplight at Suhms Gate, had changed a good deal over all these years, not because of how the buildings and sidewalks looked, but the general appearance of the neighborhood and shops, and what was supposed to attract people to this part of town, had changed a great deal, although Armand retained a clear perception that everything corresponded to his own sense of time now, let’s say in 2005, as it did in 1965, or a little later. So Armand started with the elegant Thune goldsmith shop, one of the most renowned, which had a branch on this busy corner, where he stopped to admire the jewelry in the window, displayed in the familiar continental manner, each in its own etui, which emphasized that each piece was of such unique character that it must be allowed plenty of space in order to do it justice, even if it was merely a small pearl. But what a pearl! And from this exquisite pearl Armand moved up the right side of Kirkeveien and into one of the most anonymous stretches in downtown Oslo. It is so anonymous that it takes a long time before you realize that that’s exactly what it is. First Pearls & Diamonds Forever, then McDonald’s, and after that the Majorstua post office, before you pass Ole Vigs Gate, and eventually get an idea of what sort of neighborhood you’ve wandered into. Pearls & Diamonds, McDonald’s, and the Majorstua post office are only the bait — bait targeting vastly different mental states and moods, along with different ages and buying power. Armand, for instance, undoubtedly prefers Thune to McDonald’s because of his state of mind, age, and buying power. He doesn’t like the McDonald’s logo, which he thinks can only be described as “hideous,” a word he normally prefers not to use, for stylistic reasons. The Majorstua post office on the other hand can be characterized as both sedate and venerable, yes, even to the degree that the new decor in the entry hall doesn’t deprive the ladies in Majorstua of their legendary delicacy and incredible ability to put up with all conditions of the roadway on Kirkeveien and the overcrowded premises of the bakeries in Majorstua when they exit the post office after cashing their welfare or pension checks. Over on the other side of the street, as you head up the right side of Kirkeveien to the stoplight at Suhms Gate: KA International, the Bjørke Agency, the Maternity Cabinet, the Miner, Paints for Everyone, Oriento, Kids Interior. Or a furniture store, which here at the edge of Oslo’s most anonymous urban neighborhood advertises its international character, with subsidiaries and branches in Madrid, Oslo, London, Paris, and Stockholm; and when Armand sees this he might well add a few business connections for himself: Mexico City, Amman, Cairo, Budapest, Buenos Aires, now that he’s enjoying being here in this mood when the relationship between time and reality is somewhat delayed. Next to him is the Bjørke Agency, a specialty store featuring fireproof and burglar-proof safes, including gun cabinets. It’s next to a shop for pregnant women that sells so-called maternity dresses, and which with a coquettish glance at its neighbor that sells burglarproof safes and gun cabinets, calls itself the Maternity Cabinet. Next door on the other side is the Miner, which sells jewelry and crystals taken from the mountains by the miner himself. After that comes Paints for Everyone, and then a small Asian café, Oriento, before the Bjørke Agency reinvigorates the passersby, including Armand V. strolling up the street, before he passes Trudvangveien, where Kids Interior occupies the corner. Still not a soul anywhere. Armand crosses to the other side, to a building with no shops on the ground floor. Cars are whooshing up and down. What could be hiding behind that worn-out facade? Does anyone live there? Armand can confirm, after having walked this long detour to and from his son’s place a number of times over the past six months, that he has never seen a single person standing outside the entrance to any of these rental apartments, fiddling with their keys; nor has he ever seen the street door close with a cheerful bang as someone emerges from the inner courtyard, male or female, young or old, child or grown-up. But Pizza Pancetta in the courtyard next door is open. There are staff inside too. People making pizzas and the waitstaff. And in Studio Renée, a barber and beauty shop. Haircutters there, of course. Inside Driver Training Specialist, a man sits at a desk in the middle of the shop reading a newspaper. A steep basement stairway leads down to Rock Bottom Prices, and Armand crosses another street, this time Hammerstads Gate; he could have turned right here and would have been directly in front of the building where his son lives, but he doesn’t. He crosses Hammerstads Gate, and walks along the sidewalk past the lovely facades of Kirkeveien Flowers and Bjørn Mathisen Antiques. In the florist’s shop Armand notices several customers before he again crosses and continues up a block consisting of nothing but apartment buildings, before he recrosses the street again and enters a neighborhood with a nameless kiosk in a basement, then China Gifts, Thai Massage and Reflexology, and finally another apartment building with no shops on the ground floor; there the traffic lights at the intersection of Suhms Gate are blinking, oddly close, changing regularly, automatical
ly, between green and red. Before he turns right onto Suhms Gate, he sends a long glance down Kirkeveien, across vacant lots and knolls to where the white building of the Norwegian Broadcasting System glows, and Armand looks at his watch to check whether it’s showing the same time as the clock at the top of the building. Down there it’s another world, which lies closer to Armand’s world than the areas he has just strolled through; down there the same gentle promise it used to have still holds.

  The last time Armand went to pay his son’s rent to the old widow on the first of the month, he took the tram to Majorstua as usual, crossed the street by the central tram stop, and started up the right side of Kirkeveien, past the branch of the elegant Thune goldsmith shop, then McDonald’s, and the Majorstua post office until he crossed Ole Vigs Gate. Spring had arrived, and Armand was dressed in a new light-colored, almost white, spring coat. He was wearing elegant, pointy-toed Italian walking shoes, made from very thin leather. Around his neck he wore a scarf of pure cashmere wool because of the chilly air, which he especially felt whenever he moved out of the warm springtime sunshine and into the shadows. Armand was a stylish man in his sixties, which was evident as he passed this row of buildings housing Thune the goldsmith, McDonald’s, and the Majorstua post office, where there were often the beginnings of a crowd, before crossing Ole Vigs Gate and entering the more sparsely populated area up toward the stoplight at Suhms Gate. He walked past the row of various businesses between Ole Vigs Gate and Trudvangveien, crossed Trudvangveien, and continued toward the intersection of Hammerstads Gate. Cars were whizzing past on both sides of the center divider, and Armand’s heart was pumping steadily in the chilly spring sunshine as he walked in his Italian shoes along the dry asphalt. The constant hum of the big city. The desolate aura of this neighborhood, Armand’s heart pounding. That’s how it should have been yesterday, when he passed by Pizza Pancetta and Studio Renée haircutters for ladies and gents. He noticed that there was a customer in the hair salon, a woman in her fifties sitting under the hood of a hair dryer and reading a magazine. Armand couldn’t help stopping to peer discreetly into the salon. He took a couple of steps back so as not to stand directly in front staring into the salon, pausing a few steps to the right of the shop window. What did this remind him of? It reminded him of something, that’s why he’d stopped. An incident from another time, in another city, not in Norway, but in some different country? He couldn’t quite recall, but could it have been in Madrid? In spite of everything? But he stopped trying to remember, because now he witnessed an unusual sight. A young man came running down Kirkeveien at full speed. Running as if his life depended on it. Two men were chasing him, but they were heavier and stockier than the guy running ahead, so they couldn’t catch him but fell farther and farther behind, even though they too were running at what was full speed for them. Behind those two men, farther up the street, halfway to the intersection at Suhms Gate, Armand spied an elderly woman. She had straightened up and stood howling at the sky. The first man was now approaching Armand. He was so pale, but he was fast on his feet. As he was about to pass by, Armand couldn’t resist. He wanted to do something, so he stuck out his left foot with his elegant Italian shoe right in front of the running youth, who tripped and fell headlong to the sidewalk. Armand discreetly withdrew his foot and continued up Kirkeveien, toward the stoplight at Suhms Gate, as if nothing had happened. His foot hurt, of course, but he ignored the pain and made sure to keep walking with no sign of a limp. The two middle-aged, rather corpulent men puffed past him as Armand kept walking. Up the street he could still see the old lady howling at the sky, and he set off toward her.

  But then he changed his mind. Instead of crossing Hammerstads Gate and continuing up toward Åsaveien, he stopped and turned around. He saw that the pale youth had been pulled to his feet by the two middle-aged, rather pudgy men, and one of them was holding the kid’s hands behind his back while the other was talking on his cell phone. On the sidewalk lay an old-fashioned handbag, the contents partially strewn into the street. Armand heard sirens and saw the police cars coming down Kirkeveien, and saw them pull to a stop at the curb. Armand turned around again and on the way up Kirkeveien to the stoplight at Suhms Gate he passed the old lady, who still stood rooted to the spot, but she had stopping howling and her gaze was fixed on something far down Kirkeveien. He passed her quietly, without offering even a word of consolation, which he probably should have done. At the stoplight he turned right, and at Schultz’ Gate he turned right again onto the block where his son rented a room. His good mood had vanished, and he was brooding intensely over what had just happened, and his own role in it.

  2B. Yes, he knew Oslo like the inside of his own pants pocket, so to speak. That was an expression a lot of people used back then, in the sixties, and he didn’t know why, because what in the world did it mean to know your own pocket? Could it be that it was intimately associated with the concept of “pocket pool,” which was also used a lot in those days, so that one expression had no meaning without being associated with the other? Because young men never had much in their front pockets. Usually no more than the keys to their own rented room and a handkerchief. They kept their wallet in a back pocket, which isn’t the same as the front one, since there are two pockets in front and that is where they would stick their hands, and then they might have occasion to play pocket pool, as it was then called, as a sort of distraction. So, he knew Oslo like the proximity of his own dick in a game of distraction.

  * * *

  3. The living. And the dead. It’s difficult to express. Maybe it’s like this: even though there have never been as many people living on earth as there are now, still, more of them are dead than alive. As the years go by we approach this majority and the last journey that all of us will take.

  * * *

  4. Something else happened that day too. After Armand had paid the old widow a month’s rent for his son’s room, he left the building and headed down toward Bogstadveien. He walked along Ole Vigs Gate to Industrigata and kept going. He glanced at his watch and saw that he didn’t have a lot of time, because he had an important meeting in less than an hour. But he still thought he had time to walk. If he went down Bogstadveien and Hegdehaugsveien, and then cut through the Palace Park past the Royal Palace, he could make it to his appointment without exerting himself. He liked to walk. It’s what he liked best, just as he had liked tearing around Oslo back when he was a student forty years ago, and this cold and sunny spring day had reminded him of that. But these days he walked for the exercise, not for the sake of the hunt and the chance of possible (or impossible) happiness. Oddly enough, he thought he was more observant now than he’d been back then. When he reached Bogstadveien, he spotted Hagemann on the other side of the street, so he decided to go over and say hello.

  Hagemann was standing by the modern-looking office building at the corner of Bogstadveien and Industrigata, which was also the site of a sort of shopping arcade with fashionable boutiques and the like. Hagemann was standing on the sidewalk next to a table and handing out flyers to passersby. Armand didn’t know Hagemann very well, but he’d been hearing about him for years, ever since they were both at the university. They hadn’t studied in similar fields, but they’d met through mutual friends. Armand’s most vivid memory of Hagemann was associated with the man’s girlfriend, an extraordinary and beautiful red-haired woman. Later on they got married. That’s what Armand had heard. After graduation Armand hadn’t run into Hagemann again until the mideighties, when Hagemann held an important position in one of the prominent parties of which Norway has so many. Unfortunately he eventually got mixed up in a shady scandal, which involved financial irregularities, though its significance may have been blown all out of proportion. At any rate, Hagemann was convicted of embezzlement and spent two or three years in prison before he was released. Some of his former political cronies helped him find a job at some office or warehouse, and now and then Armand would run into him, though infrequently, and he would always
stop for a chat. Hagemann’s remarkably beautiful redhead had stuck by him through the revelation, scandal, trial, and prison sentence. When he was released he moved back home with her and their two children, and possibly, Armand wasn’t sure, they had moved to a less expensive apartment because their financial situation had naturally suffered, most likely to an extreme degree. But after a few years they ended up divorced. By that time the children were grown and had moved out. Since then, Hagemann had lived alone, presumably in the same neighborhood, because it was here, in the vicinity of Bogstadveien, that Armand had now run into him once again.

  They always took the time for a chat. Exchanged views, actually. Armand never tried to pump Hagemann about his private life, so he knew no more than what he’d heard from others, and this put him at a disadvantage. Now he crossed the street, choosing to jaywalk instead of obeying the city’s admonition to cross at the light, which would have forced him to stand and wait for the light to change in order to cross Industrigata, then wait for the other light to change to cross Bogstadveien, and then wait for the green light to cross Industrigata on the lower side of Bogstadveien. No, he stepped right out into the street, after first making sure that no tram was about to run him down and that the cars were so far away in both directions that they wouldn’t hit him either, or just miss him and honk angrily; he reached the opposite side of the street, where Hagemann, who had seen him coming, approached, and they shook hands.