And all because of a girl of forty-odd kilos. He found a milk glass and filled it almost to the brim. Raised it to his mouth and drank. He leaned against the worktop gulping sherry, and suddenly he had to laugh. He observed himself through the eyes of another. A lonely man reduced to drinking sherry from a milk glass with tears streaming down his face, just because some girl had been to his home. The whole business was so demeaning it made him cringe. He continued to laugh, louder now, it began to resemble a kind of braying, sounds he did not know he was capable of making filled the whole kitchen. Every now and then he would pour himself another sherry, swigging it as if it were juice, followed by more outbursts of his braying laughter. With his free hand he gripped the worktop tightly.
This, he realised, is the end of the road for me.
CHAPTER 21
'I'm already beaten,' Alvar says.
It is hard for him to accept this realisation, and his back is bent. His eyes shine from too much sherry and his hands are shaking badly.
'Sit down,' I order him. 'Let's talk about it.'
'No one in my family ever had a drink problem,' he adds.
'Is that right?'
'I just wanted you to know that. It's not a path I wish to take and I don't usually knock back sherry like this.'
'I'll bear that in mind,' I reply. 'So let's say that you needed to let off some steam very badly, but that it's not going to become a habit.'
'Thank you.'
He lets himself fall onto my sofa. There are beads of sweat on his shiny forehead and hints of dark shadows under his eyes.
'There's something I've been meaning to ask you,' he says in a tired voice.
'Fire away.'
'Is she the strong one or am I?'
I consider his question. 'What do you think?'
He shakes his head. 'I don't know. But I need to take my share of the blame for the situation I've ended up in. At the same time she is so slippery, like an eel between my hands. I try to find a way out, but as things stand now, I can't see it. There are times when I just feel like giving up. Leave the responsibility for everything to you. Just drift along while you let things happen, whatever those things might be. It's not as if it can get any worse, can it? Can it get any worse?'
'What precisely are you scared of?' I ask.
He thinks about it. 'Well, many things, I guess. Perhaps I'm scared of losing my mind. Sometimes it feels like that might happen and I'm frightened that the fragile thread that I have with the outside world might snap. Though there is no history of mental illness in my family either, not as far as I know, anyway. And I'm also scared that I might act on impulse.'
'Why is that scary?'
'Surely that's obvious,' he exclaims. 'We can't allow ourselves to be controlled by impulses.'
'Which particular impulse did you have in mind?' I ask.
'The one that controls your temper,' he says darkly.
I lean forward across the table. I look him straight in the eye.
'Alvar. Dear Alvar. I know you, you wouldn't be able to hurt a fly.'
'I've always thought so too,' he says, somewhat relieved. 'I've always striven to behave as calmly as possible. But sometimes I get this gut feeling. It tightens and it spreads to my arms in a horrible way. And before I know it I clench my fists ready to fight. Because everything around me is exploding and because I can't find the words, so I lose my footing and I stumble over the edge. Are you turning a peaceful man into a thug, is that your plan?'
'No, Alvar, calm down. God knows you're a peaceful man,' I say, 'and I'm not going to tamper with this feature. Mankind's tragedy, however, is that too much peacefulness can sometimes lead to disaster. You ought to read Zapffe,' I suggest, 'he's your kind of philosopher. I've got his essays here on my bookshelf, if you want to borrow them.'
'Thank you.'
'Incidentally, I have always believed that you ought to judge people on the basis of their actions,' I continue, 'not on what they say, think or mean. There are plenty of people ready to shoot their mouths off.'
'But I'm not that type either,' he says quickly. 'I don't act and I don't judge. All I'm doing is pacing up and down this labyrinth looking for the exit. Like a lab rat. A repulsive, trained lab rat.'
'I think you're being very hard on yourself.'
'You're the one being hard, it's your book.'
'Our book,' I correct him. 'Don't underestimate your own part in this collaboration. I listen to you, I can be influenced. Especially at this point, when we're well into the book.'
'It's going to be dramatic, isn't it? That's what I'm picking up from you. We've peaked and now we're going to start running down the hill. And I can't even pray because you haven't given me a God.'
'Would you like a God?'
'I imagine all lost souls would. It's the loveliest fairy tale in the world,' he adds, looking sad. 'Reserved only for the few.'
'Try to believe in yourself,' I say, 'believe that you're worth something. That you can do something. That you possess great reserves which you can draw on in times of crisis.'
'You believe in me,' he said miserably. 'But I'm scared that I might end up letting you down. That I can't run the race you have entered me in.'
I look at him solemnly and say sincerely, 'It has never, ever happened that one of my characters has let me down.'
'There's always a first time.'
'With that sort of attitude you might well be right. It takes a lot out of me too, don't forget that. I'm worn out.'
He gets up from the sofa and takes a walk across the floor. His head is bowed, his hands are behind his back. Then he stops, he has remembered something.
'In some strange way I actually like Lindys,' he says, somewhat surprised by his own, stumbling admission.
'Tell me more.'
'She doesn't give a damn about anything. She doesn't follow any rules, she helps herself to whatever she wants. She doesn't care what people think of her. She never tries to please anyone and she doesn't care about consequences. Her attitude is devil-may-care and perhaps that's a kind of freedom. She's on heroin, she lives her life one hour at a time. Whereas I, on the other hand, am trapped inside myself. I have order and control and structure, but I can't get out.'
'And deep down that's what you want? To finally show yourself as you really are, warts and all?'
'I never used to think so,' he says, 'but now I can see that this is what it's all about. I'm fed up with being careful. Anonymous. Correct.'
'What do you think we would see if you finally escaped?'
He stops. He folds his arms across his chest.
'That's the problem, this is what truly worries me. Perhaps I have nothing to show, perhaps what you see in front of you standing here on the floor is all there is to see. Or, I might open up only to discover terrible things.'
'Such as?'
'Cowardice. Brutality. Panic.'
'But no great passion,' I smile, 'no bubbling joy, no heartache, no wild and uncontrollable laughter.'
