Cabin Fever

by Alex Dahl

  She began to say worrying things, and at times she took her underlying anger out on me. One of the last times I saw her, she called me a ‘Fucking golden girl who lives in a fucking golden bubble with my fucking golden husband,’ and I had to work hard, then, at controlling my own reactions to her. I knew that what she said really had nothing to do with me or my life, and everything to do with how deeply disappointed and ashamed she was about the mess she’d made of her own life. I knew that it wasn’t my fault that she couldn’t find healing and peace.

  Loving Elisabeth in those last days required merging friendship with therapy, but I loved Elisabeth; she was my best friend in spite of everything, and I tried everything in my power to save her. I really did.

  I feel overwhelmed with dread thinking about Elisabeth and how she ended her life, and the thought of Leah insinuating herself into her life is unbearable. Highly unstable herself, she might have directly contributed to the way things turned out for Elisabeth. Looking back, I can see how she might have influenced Elisabeth; toward the end, she went from being seemingly content and more at peace than she had been for many years, to becoming so angry and so bitter. At the time I suspected that her treatment at Villa Vinternatt was making her question everything and that her new pursuit of art had brought all those feelings to the surface. I tried to redirect her focus to the future, to everything she could still become. But she refused to let go.

  *

  My head and the bruised side of my face throb with increasing intensity. My fingers hurt and still feel strangely numb. My stomach aches and growls. And my ankle hurts so badly the sensation of it almost goes beyond pain, like if you put your hand into a flame and watch the skin burn but feel a wild heat rather than pain. It must be late in the evening by now, but it’s hard to tell because the moon is hidden behind thick clouds and I can see from where I’m lying on the sofa that the snow is falling heavily again. I close the computer to preserve the battery; it’s just gone into power-saving mode and I doubt I have more than another half hour of power. I haven’t seen the charger anywhere, and it’s not like I can easily move about to search for it. I need the bathroom and it takes me at least ten minutes to get there. I find that the easiest way to move around is to sit on the floor and very gently push my way backward. Still, I cry with the intensity of the pain and by the time I return to the sofa, I’m trembling with exhaustion. How will I ever make it back down to the car? And how will I get through the night, with nothing but Leah’s insane account for company?

  52

  Supernova

  Many days have passed since I wrote this account up until this point. In the meantime, terrible things have happened. When I first started this, it felt powerful and exhilarating, like all the pieces just magically slotted into place. It just flowed, at long last. Night after starry night, the words came rushing out, just how I intended them, like a piece of music masterfully coaxed from an ancient instrument. For every day that passed I lost hope that you might come, that we might sit across from each other here in this room, like I’d envisioned, finally united in truth. But for every day that passed, it mattered less, and a slight hope began to grow, that writing this account of the truth might come to matter just the same. But then the baby left me, Kristina. I can’t bear it. It made me realize the outcome will be different now. There will be no happy ending. I can’t, won’t, can’t, stay. But I decided to finish this, first. Why? Because I wanted someone to know the whole truth. My truth. We’re arriving at a crucial point here, something I’ve been staving off and also building up in my head. Perhaps what’s happened to me in the meantime can bring the right rawness to what happened to you.

  Someone once told me that when it comes to writing, you start off with an earthquake and then work your way up to the climax. It’s strange, how something seemed to loosen inside me once I started writing to you, and on some level, I must have known all along that we’d end up here. Back there. I meant what I said about exposure therapy, that it will help you, so I’ve tried to rebuild what happened. I feel I know these scenes so intimately it’s as though I was there myself. I wish I could see your face as you read my words. I wish I could know if I got it right. If I helped.

  You run excitedly towards the dirty grey Mazda sedan purring impatiently by the side of the deserted road, exhaust rising into the night sky. You scoot across the back seat and try to get a glimpse of the man behind the wheel, but you can only make out a smooth brown neck and longish black hair curling at the tips. You feel a wave of trepidation and fight the urge to slip back into the night, but you immediately feel silly – after all, there are three of you. Elisabeth and Trine rush into the car, giggling and breathing exaggeratedly after the little dash up the cracked tarmac towards the car. Trine’s bare legs squeak against the leather seats. Elisabeth mutters, ‘Hola,’ and, ‘Gracias,’ and then all three of you giggle again, a hollow nervousness creeping into your voices. The man steps on the gas and the car surges off, fast.

  When someone had finally stopped, you’d squealed and clapped your hands, it felt like you’d been standing there for hours in the hot, dusty air. You know that hitchhiking in Venezuela is a bad idea, but you also know that you need to free yourself from the over-protectiveness of your parents back home, and that young people need to have adventures. Wild adventures – that was the whole point of this. Besides, Elisabeth and Trine are convincing co-travelers and you know better than to question their plans. Mostly, you just do what they say.

  You glance at them now, watching shadows chase across their faces as the car speeds north towards the coast, bringing those sandy palm-fringed beaches you’ve been dreaming of closer.

  Carúpano, Elisabeth had said as she got in the car, and the man had nodded, so presumably he’d understood. It isn’t far, less than thirty minutes, but the bus you’d planned on taking never came. While you waited, you drank tequila from a roadside shack and danced in the violet twilight with your best friends, well aware of the stares from the men populating the plastic chairs to the side of the makeshift bar. You smoked cigarette after cigarette, stubbing them out with the heel of your flip-flop. After a long while, feeling warm and woozy, you started walking, leaving the few lights dotting the steep hillsides of the little crossroads town behind. Then it got dark. Elisabeth and Trine had stuck their thumbs out every time a pair of headlights appeared in the distance, but not a single car had even slowed down, before this one.

  The car stops. The jungle has grown denser and stands like mountainsides on either side of the road. A long sliver of moonlight spills down the empty road, making it appear liquid, like a river snaking through the forest. You glance down at your hands, held gingerly in your lap. A childhood memory flashes through your brain, random but clear; those same hands gripping the handlebars of your first bicycle, purple and white streamers flying behind you as you tore down the streets. You look at Trine and Elisabeth, but they are both quiet and serious, now, like you. Your eyes have adjusted to the darkness and you can make out a narrow dirt track disappearing into the forest from the patchily asphalted main road.

  The man turns around and only now do you finally see his face. It is a beautiful face, with soulful black eyes set beneath thick brows, and full lips spreading out in a slow smile at the sight of you. His cheeks are sweetly dimpled, and a long scar runs from the outer corner of his eye all the way down to his stubbled jaw, as though a tiger had clawed him. A small snake is tattooed on his throat, its red serpent tongue flicking upwards to the man’s chin. You can’t help but take a stunned, sharp breath of air. He’ll come back, this man, in your dreams and in your waking moments, and maybe you know already now that you’ll never be free of him. You’ll write about him in your diary in twenty years’ time, when you’ll be a respectable, married woman with a beautiful home and a rewarding career. You’ll write about that first moment. About desire coursing through you like a white heat. You won’t feel desire like it again, not ever, not with anybody. Is it even real, such a sudden and
uncontrollable explosion in the synapses, at the mere sight of a stranger? In your own words – an instant surrender of everything I knew, everything I thought I was?

  I’m on my way to a party, he says, in almost fluent English, nodding towards the dirt track. It’s an awesome house. Overlooking Playa Hernan Vasquez. My brother and a couple of friends are there. Come and have a few drinks with us.

  Trine shakes her head almost imperceptively. Elisabeth says nothing, but looks at you for direction. A glance passes between you, and she knows, she’ll always remember the look in your eyes. At the time, she would have called it the look of desire, or love, even, but much later, she’ll realize it was the thrill of danger.

  Yes, says Elisabeth. You coyly break the man’s glance; you know instinctively to leave him wanting more.

  How does it make you feel, how his life turned out?

  53

  Kristina

  I close my eyes. I have to. I feel myself disappearing down into the empty spaces inside myself, back in time, back to the place I never allow into my thoughts, there is no point anyway – there’s nothing but a milky nothingness there.

  But now it is as though the scene Leah describes colors in the white patches in my memory. Where my brain has always drawn a blank when it comes to him, I now suddenly and distinctly remember the serpent tattoo on his throat, his soulful eyes and deep dimples, the scar on his cheek like a river on a map. In spite of Leah’s extremely limited understanding of dissociative amnesia, it’s true that huge patches of my memory were simply erased. I spent my early twenties in intense therapy to heal and to try to retrieve the memories of what happened in Venezuela – like Leah, I believed back then that remembering would be the only way to move on. In the end, Ingvild taught me that acceptance was more important than full recollection, and besides, we knew what happened because Elisabeth was there.

  I open my eyes briefly and they flood with tears. I close them again and now I see him clearly in my mind’s eye. I can’t recall the rest of the scene – the car ride and the words he spoke, what we were wearing and what thoughts might have run through my head, but Leah has succeeded in sending me back there, to Carúpano. The forest that surrounded the futuristic beach house set high above a pristine bay we were brought to was as dense and ancient as the one surrounding this cabin. Instead of being snow-covered and silent, the jungle of Carúpano was sticky warm and buzzing with a plethora of sounds. The sounds of lives lived in the undergrowth, in the trees, in the air above them, a ceaseless chattering of a thousand species. This I remember. And the deafening gunshot.

  ‘Why?’ I whisper into the cool air of the silent cabin. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ I have to know why. And, Elisabeth – what have you done?

  54

  Elisabeth, July

  The dining room looks and feels very different. No longer witness to the chattering of residents and clinking of cutlery, the commissary tables and long benches are gone and replaced with row upon row of white sheets like sails awaiting their ships. The exhibition, titled ‘Recovery Reframed’, is the first of its kind in Norway and seen as a groundbreaking attempt to rehabilitate some of the country’s most prolific drug addicts by restoring their art careers left in ruins by addiction. Similar programs have already met with great success in New York and London, and Oslo is keen to follow suit.

  The management of Villa Vinternatt is busy organizing the installation, and the stress of it all is etched on their faces. Carpenters are still busily constructing the gallery while staff meticulously pin small white description cards to each piece in an attempt to make some sense of what the artist is trying to convey. The media has taken quite an interest in the story and several journalists are expected to attend the vernissage, hoping to speak to the artists themselves.

  Elisabeth is one of the most high-profile artists in the group and her series of five paintings all center on the recurrent theme of blood. She smiles to herself as she stands back and looks at her work, knowing that a part of her is on the canvas, her blood, guided by the brush strokes of her memories. Memories so dark that the only way she feels she can survive sometimes is to get them out of her physically. Nobody knows that she cuts herself. The inside of her mouth hides the lacerations; it’s one of her many secrets and it brings her a strange thrill to know that her blood is there, unhidden, on the canvas for everyone to see. Her haunting imagery sees wild animals, scared, trapped and abandoned, fused against a bleak swirling landscape of rich earthy tones. Bloodshot eyes, bloodied mouths, bleeding wounds, blood-emptied open bellies.

  Her thoughts are interrupted by a junior counselor asking her to change as the guests will be arriving in the next thirty minutes. Elisabeth makes her way back to her room and rifles through the few items of clothing in her wardrobe. It actually hasn’t occurred to her that it might be nice to wear something special on a night like tonight. She throws on a navy chiffon blouse and the only pair of trousers she owns that aren’t sweatpants, adding a flick of mascara and a touch of lipstick. Perfume is banned at Villa Vinternatt because it contains alcohol, as if she would glug her favorite Chanel, and the thought makes her smile impulsively at herself in the mirror. Her palms start to sweat as she heads back to the dining room, the hum of voices rising up the stairwell from the formal reception rooms downstairs.

  All the artists are asked to stand next to their work, like schoolchildren awkwardly showing their finger-painting skills at parents’ evening. Elisabeth guesses it is mainly so that the press and members of the local community can more easily tell the druggies from the staff. Elisabeth wishes Kristina were here tonight. It feels almost impossible that she isn’t – all these years later, Kristina remains her main source of support and comfort, more so than her elderly mother. But Kristina is in Hamburg at a conference about rapid eye movement therapy. Elisabeth asked her if there was any way she could move it around or even not go so that she could be there tonight, but Kristina had to go. Elisabeth understands, of course she does, but glancing toward the wide double doors at the throng of people waiting to be let in, she has to swallow hard at the thought of Kristina not being among them.

  The members of the local community hover at the entrance, like vultures circling high above carrion; nothing like ogling the inner thoughts of a bunch of junkies. It was only a few years ago, under the old management, that the residents were nicknamed the Vintanutters, a term that still endures many years later.

  Elisabeth goes through the motion of explaining her pictures and answering the usual questions from well-meaning people who have no ability to understand what she’s been through.

  ‘What made you take heroin?’

  ‘It looks like real blood; well done. How did you manage that?’

  ‘Why don’t you paint happy themes?’

  ‘Do you think you’ll return to drugs?’

  ‘Do they lock the doors at night here?’

  ‘You don’t look like a drug addict.’

  ‘I suppose prostitution must have been part of that whole life, eh?’

  She turns away from the man asking the question mid-sentence and walks out of the room. In the next room, where the larger sculptures of some of the residents are displayed, she catches the eye of a young woman, a tall, attractive woman in white jeans and a blue-and-white striped blouse. The woman smiles at her, and she smiles back in passing; she’s on her way to the bathroom to splash some cold water on her face and get a moment’s peace.

  ‘Hey. Hey, wait,’ says the woman and Elisabeth turns back around to face her. When she does she is struck by a sudden familiarity, and then it occurs to her that the stranger in front of her bears a slight resemblance to Kristina. It’s something to do with the smooth bronzed skin, the understated style, the gold stud earrings and the chocolate-brown, expensively highlighted high ponytail. ‘Are you Elisabeth Eliassen?’

  ‘Uh, yes?’

  ‘I’m familiar with your work. I really wanted to speak with you. My name is Ella Victor, I’m a journalist at D
agbladet.’ Elisabeth shakes the woman’s hand and lets herself be gently led by the elbow back through the throng of people to her canvases in the next room.

  ‘Your work is fantastic,’ says Ella Victor, looking past Elisabeth and gazing to the pieces strung from the ceiling, focusing intently on each one in turn. ‘You’ve really captured the essence of something quite frightening here.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Elisabeth replies, blushing slightly at the praise. Sometimes she thinks her work is so dark that nobody could ever see past the darkness and see beauty there, too. She looks at Ella again and there is something about the way she stares at her that makes her suddenly afraid – it’s not Kristina she reminds her of now, but one of the animals circling her in her dreams. She takes a big sip from her glass of orange juice and feels like laughing out loud at her own ridiculousness.

  ‘Shall I tell you about this one?’ she says, pointing to the middle canvas and Ella nods enthusiastically, any trace of imagined threat gone from her eyes.

  55

  Supernova

  You moved on. You healed. I get it. It’s what people do. You did your own long years in therapy and it made you reflective and aware of your own reactions and contributions – I suppose those are the things we all hope for when coming to therapy. Your training taught you real insight into yourself, I imagine, to the point where your inner life became subject to understanding and empathy, and perhaps this was one of the things I sensed and which so drew me to you. You know how to forgive yourself. You believe that you deserve it. I want that for myself. Especially now, as you will come to understand.