by
Liv Ullmann
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WHAT IS THERE TO TELL ABOUT THE ACTUAL DEPARTURE?
The publicity around the private grief? The newspapers that pushed into our lives. Stomped on what was painful. Magazines with cover pictures from our first times together. Smiling and happy faces with black captions: “HIS NEW LIFE WITHOUT LIV. READ THE END OF THE STORY.” In our misery we were on an intimate footing with half of Scandinavia.
A reporter called in friendly commiseration and said that I could choose’ to tell the truth myself, or else place the press in such a position that they would have to write their own version. Another asked if I had the telephone number of his new woman.
I had to sneak out of a hotel room and run down the back stairs because there were photographers waiting at the main entrance. Dark glasses to conceal a grief—a little human suffering running by in a picture makes for good sales. Especially when the text furnishes an intimate account of disaster.
I remember standing in a back alley among garbage cans and laundry lines, waiting for a car. In my dramatic way I experienced the situation symbolically and decided that I couldn’t spend the rest of my life like this. Among garbage cans.
I remember friends waiting at the airport when I arrived in Sweden right afterward. I was frightened and shy before all the looks and remarks. The girls had champagne and placards. They were standing in hippie fashion, waving their texts which said: “LIFE GOES ON.” “
I laughed for the first time in ages and spilled champagne on the terminal floor.
We stayed up all night at Bibi’s house. Four or five women, each with a love story to relate. Each with a place, somewhere on earth, where they could no longer return.
<3<3
When the final separation came, we didn’t talk about it. We pretended that it had no meaning when I packed all my clothes. Just a short visit to Norway.
Linn’s things were left behind. Those I didn’t dare touch— it would have been too obvious, too final.
I didn’t look back as the car drove away, leaving behind all that we had found together—chairs and lamps and tables. The view and the sounds of the sea and the trees.
Siri, who understood everything better than we, stood behind the curtain and cried.
But we didn’t cry. Not then.
You cannot imagine how much we hoped in the beginning.
AS LONG AS I LIVED ON THE ISLAND, I KEPT THINKING that I would be able to break through the isolation and find him on the other side.
We recognized so much in each other. Perhaps we were too much alike.
Sometimes he said that we were.
I used to dream about a great togetherness and was sure that we could achieve it.
But with the break came the final isolation—and I knew it would never happen.
And then something broke inside me.
The girl within me wept and wept. She made all of me, who after all was thirty, into a little thirteen-year-old again.
Until I had no more tears. and realized it was impossible to live as if my life could only be fulfilled through another person. Pointless to seek refuge in someone else from what was my loneliness and insecurity.
Ingmar was no longer in my life as before. That was a fact, and nothing could alter it.
But I still had myself, contact with my own being, everything in me that wanted to continue onward.
I missed Ingmar’s daily presence, but I knew I had his friendship and it was up to me, who at that moment needed it most, to find a new point of contact at which we could both meet.
With all the power I owned, I built a bridge between us, and after that everything was better.
For a time we used to phone each other several times a day. I read him pieces of my old compositions. He played me his favorite records.
Love has many faces.
I wonder how many Noras there are in the world who would like to go, but never dare. And if they go—where? Is it important to know—or is it the actual step through the door that counts? The will to meet the world beyond one’s own constructed security.
<3
I had become an established film star, with photographs and interviews in the press. I smiled from pictures taken in capitals most of my family only knew from the atlas. Smiling, arm in arm with famous and stupid and wise and kind and rich people.
Encountering situations I had never thought would come near me. Travels and impressions and kindness and goodness I hoped my subconscious would store up until misfortune came.
After a year, I went home on a visit. Walked past the theatre with a sense of true sorrow that I no longer belonged there. Sneaked into the auditorium during a rehearsal and sat in the darkness, reveling in the world I so much wanted to be part of. At the same time I felt a slight arrogance because | knew what I was now experiencing made up for the lines I was not speaking on that stage.
While she still has him, they go away to a warm country. She holds his hand while he reads, and she feels a tranquillity because everything is ordinary. She can afford the knowledge that there are long periods when he doesn’t think about her. But she also knows that the hand resting in hers will soon give it a quick hard squeeze to show that she exists for him.
Sometimes he turns and looks at her with happiness, and once in a great while there is uneasiness in the eyes. Then she knows he is thinking of his wife and children and she realizes with an icy clearness that he both loves her and is going to leave her.
As if he reads her thoughts, he puts away his book. “I can never live without you,” he lies to her in the sun.
She believes him until he falls asleep, holding her close to him.
She knows when he wakes his sense of guilt will also awaken his need for security and order, his loyalty to what he feels is his responsibility. What he owes to another. Beloved man.
ack
I caught myself passing by a genuine situation without stopping and becoming part of it, and’then reproducing the same reality on screen with all my compassion.
When I encountered a drunk man in the street, I followed him—not to help, but to study the way he set his feet down, how his arms hung limp and dangled at his sides.
Other people were objects I could meet and use for professional purposes.
I wiped the tears from the eyes of a character I was playing and walked blindly past tears in my home.
Oh, yes. I saw the dangers. Hesitated. ,
I met an athlete who had reached the top. Heard him talking of his record race when there were tenths of a second between him and the next man. What had he sacrificed for those moments? What did the reverse side of his medal look like? Had he not paid for his few seconds of triumph with days and months and years during which he had had to say no to everything else?
Was this what I was using my new-won freedom for?
The famous Movie Hero fetches me for dinner. He brings an enormous fir tree covered with artificial silver and imitation pearls. Unfortunately, he resembles my first love and when anyone does that, red warning lights switch on inside me. It is very difficult in America when those lights start blinking—because American men say “I love you” as part of the conversation.
And when the man is one of the Famous you cannot laugh it off; because they have such sensitive egos, and think they never give better performances than when they half-close their velvet eyes over a glass of wine and whisper lines from the films in which they have acted.
The next day all the papers proclaim that the famous Movie Hero and I are lovers.
lolll
The Playboy king is wearing terry-cloth pajamas. Some girls walk about with long furry rabbits’ ears fastened to their heads and little round tails on their bottoms.
We look at films: A dog makes love to a girl. I think of Pet and hope she will not discover what I am doing.
heh
In the dining room wait an agent and a producer. They want to consult with me about who is to have the male lead in my next film. I am delighted at being asked, even though I know that it is all a pretense laid on to please me. I suspect that somewhere is an actor with a signed contract being consulted in the same way about me.