NOVEL

Our Love Will Last for Ever

The Love We Had, Chapter 31

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31

Last night I could not sleep. It was one of those nights when I lay there in bed waiting for long hours for sleep.

Lars was there, by my side, snoring with a little sound every now and then. But it wasn’t his snoring that prevented me from falling asleep. It was something else. I was thinking. My mind was smooth and in a kind of transparent, awake state. I was filled with this new thing. This new and previously unknown consciousness. These feelings, these waking dreams. Thoughts on him. This wonderful person I have met.

This man — he’s a human being that I am allowed to meet, unexpectedly and that I might get to know a little. He’s like a gift, like the gifts life gives me a few times. He comes occasionally to me from nowhere out there. He, this unknown, maybe my twin soul.

Getting enough sleep is one of the most important things in life. When I do not get enough sleep, I feel outside myself, and that is not good. But sometimes there is hardly any defence against it, I mean, against the absence of sleep. Sometimes I get such wild, disturbing thoughts, such an enormous, uncontrollable thought activity. Thoughts run wild.

“Looks like you feel a little like me,” he said suddenly that other night, it was one of our first nights together, and we had time to talk, and to go a little more in depth.

“Oh. What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “I can see it. How I see you, it has something to do with your gaze, this good, a little restless, searching gaze.”

I smile inside when I think back on that night. He compared us, and it was favorable. We resemble each other.

We get so close to each other. He and I — there’s so much we have in common. I discover it every time we are together. I know in my heart that I must take this chance. I have to do what I can because I will not get many such chances in life. That’s why I do what I do.

It was a little dizzy morning after a night almost without sleep, because we finally had the possibility to be together over hours uninterrupted. We lay on the bed and talked about different things. About what we have together, he and I.

“It’s so fine to experience that we’re so close to each other,” I said.

“Yes dear,” he nodded.

“I love that we can talk together about almost anything.”

“I feel so too.”

“And it’s so easy to get started, and we can switch topics and talk about anything.”

I feel safe when I am with him, and what’s so nice about it, is that I relax completely. I can say things to him that I would not otherwise say.

I lay my hand on his arm. I felt the warm skin.

“Are you tired?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Did you sleep well yesterday? Before I came?”

“Oh yes. I even dreamt of you.”

I kissed him. I leaned back and looked at him.

“No, you didn’t!”

“Oh yes, I did!”

He smiled:

“You know, if I do not get enough sleep, like after this wild night, I’m completely out of my mind. I’m not human anymore. But listen. I think you’re a bit like me too.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You’re a wild one,” he smiled.

“A wild rose,” he added.

“I’ll tell you something,” I said. “ — When we are not together, I do not feel alive like I do now.”

I looked at him.

“And I miss you,” I said.

“Thank you, that’s nice of you.”

“Miss you because it’s so easy to talk with you.”

“I like to talk with you too.”

He smiled again, and I felt his smile was sending heat rays through me.

“And it’s because I get happy when we are together and we talk in that way, it’s in a way a new kind of freedom,” I said.

“Yes, and what does it mean for you, a new kind of freedom?” he asked.

“To be free is to feel good. It is to feel that you are not bound by other things outside of you, such things that limit me and that make me feel in a bad mood.”

“So, freedom has to do with your mood? How you’re feeling?” he asked.

“Perhaps in a way, yes. In short I was going to say that I am free in my life because no one else rules over me and my life.”

“Yes?”

“I was going to say that it is he who I am married to who decides, but actually it is not true.”

“Why not?”

“Am I free in my life?” I asked. “Is it me and no one else who rules over me and my life? Or is it him?”

“It depends how you —” he said.

“It started in the last years, I think. I began to think that it is him who has decided on me and my life.”

“And then -?”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” I said, “and I realize that I actually believed it. I thought it was so that he, my husband, was the one who has decided on me and my life. Because isn’t it him with whom I have been living, he who has opinions on everything and who wants to decide above small and large, like saying where the closet should stand, where I should stay in my everyday life, how to spend my time?”

“Yes, I think that’s rather a common case.”

He nodded.

“Many people in relationships, yes, many couples live that way. Very often it is one of the partners who mostly decides the framework for the common life in the relationship.”

“Yeah, I have thought so. But it’s not true.”

“No?”

“No,” I said, “because when he is away from me for a few days, when he is gone to the mountains and I am free from him several days — then he is not there to rule over me.”

“Yes, when he’s absent, physically absent…”

“I think then I may be master in my own life. I feel like I can start thinking that I can break the pattern.”

He smiled.

“Sounds good, yes.”

“I can change the habits. I can replace the automatic thoughts which guide me to the automatic actions.”

He smiled again.

“I know what you think of, automatic thoughts, automatic actions…”

“I think that I can be free in my life if I want to. I can imagine myself at least a bit freer.”

“Yes, but then you seek together with a new man?”

He looked at me, serious. But he said nothing more. I didn’t say anything more either. We sat silent for a while.

Later we talked about us, him and me.

“Why did you come here?” I asked, “was it because of her, your ex?”

“No,” he said, “it was not. I got to know her a couple of years after I came here.”

“Oh — I see.”

“I didn’t come here because of her, no.”

“But do you not long to return north, or do you?”

“No, nothing special. It’s dark for large parts of the year, and it’s cold and there are long periods with stormy weather.”

“Yes, but that’s the way it is here too,” I said. “The weather is not better here.”

“Oh yes, that’s true, there’s so much rain here, it’s crazy.”

“But as long as we have each other, we’re fine, aren’t we?”

“Oh yeah, true.”

“Yeah. Our love will last for ever.”

The story that the novel tells takes place in a small industrial town at the end of a fjord in western Norway. The story being told and the characters are fictional.

The photos included in the chapters are taken on location in Odda and in the Odda Smelter (Odda Smelteverk, 1906–2003), the carbide factory that is part of the story.

The Love We Had

Part 1 The Longest Night -chapters 1–3, told by Lars. Part 2 The Light Inside -chapters 4–17, told by Aslak. Part 3 Save Our Secret Love -chapters 18 — XX, told by Eira.

For quick access to all chapters, go here.

Previous chapter: 30 Inside — Outside

Next: Chapter 32 Dare to Say These Little Words

Øivind H. Solheim writes fiction, essays and articles aiming to help others understanding life, other humans and themselves. He has published five novels, two non-fiction books and a poetry book.

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