Will and Testament

by Vigdis Hjorth

  I was sent to Rikshospitalet for strange tests. The man conducting them said that ultimately analysis might change my life, he warned me that I risked breaking ties and shattering relationships, I understood, but it was too late, I had nothing left to lose. Two days later I was informed that I qualified for state-funded psychoanalysis four times a week for as long as was necessary.

  This was a new development. My desperate unhappiness remained the same, but I had taken one step towards change.

  Four days a week I would lie on the couch and not see my listener, not know if he heard what I said. I couldn’t scan his face or body for reactions, indications of acknowledgement, understanding, surprise, compassion, there was no point in gesturing, smiling, fluttering my eyelashes, making myself attractive, adding a grimace or waving my hands about, there were only my words and my voice that carried them and they would often linger in the air and I heard what I said, how I lied. My first sentence on the couch was: There were four of us, I was the favourite.

  As I said it, in the embarrassing silence that followed because I got no reaction and was unable to carry on, a bolt of lightning shot through my whole body. The words with which I had so often begun the story about myself, revealed me in all their mendacity. It wasn’t true, it was the exact opposite! But this obvious fact hadn’t dawned on me until this moment. Why would I have made myself believe something like that? Was the rest of my story equally untruthful?

  Four times a week. Before I turned up for a session, I wondered what I would say when I got there; when I left, I wondered what I had said, before I started thinking about what I would say the next time, I existed in a state of pain and shame, which couldn’t be undone, but which I couldn’t live with unprocessed either.

  When I was a little girl, I would often be alone with Dad, I would go with Dad to the sweetshop and Dad would buy me sweets. I don’t remember much of what happened before or after we went to the sweetshop, but I remember the sweetshop trips, it was wonderful that Dad bought sweets just for me. Once when I was in the sweetshop with Dad, a boy I was in love with turned up, I fell in love with boys from an early age, I was unusually interested in boys, a boy I was in love with came in and I blushed, mortified that he saw me in the sweetshop with my dad.

  Once I had grown up, I was rarely alone with Dad, but occasionally Dad and I would be on our own in Bråteveien and the mood would be strained. Once Dad told me about a dream he had had. Dad was interested in dreams, in Jung. He had dreamt that an alcoholic woman in a shabby old dressing gown was staggering through the house in Bråteveien, and it had been a frightening sight, a nightmare. My first thought was how strange that he had dreamt about me, that my future self so terrified Dad. Dad was interested in Jung and in dreams because he knew they couldn’t be controlled.

  December 15. My watch had stopped, it said five o’clock though it was ten past noon. I checked my inbox, no new emails. I couldn’t stand being at home constantly checking my emails, I dressed up warmly, put the article about Elfriede Jelinek into my bag and walked seven kilometres to the watchmaker who fitted my watch with a new battery. I went to the café by the railway station and drank coffee and edited the article with my pen in my hand, without the Mac so I wouldn’t check my emails all the time, but I checked my emails on my mobile instead and found that I’d had a reply from Bård, who wrote that he would like to hear what had happened to me. I said that he would get to hear it one day. I didn’t want to tell him about it, I wanted him to know it, wanted them all to know it, but I would rather not have to tell them because it was disgusting and telling it made me ill. I checked my emails on my mobile, at ten minutes to two Bård had replied to yesterday’s email from Astrid and copied me in. I put the article about Elfriede Jelinek aside, I couldn’t concentrate anyway.

  Bård began by pointing out that if Mum and Dad really wanted to treat us equally, they needn’t write a will at all because the inheritance law would deal with the issue of fairness.

  He listed circumstances with which I wasn’t familiar because I had been apart from the family for years, while Bård had done his homework. It concerned the transfer of flats and various forms of financial assistance, matters he had mentioned to Dad several times, and Dad had always assured him that everything had been written down and would be accounted for and that interest would be calculated at a future probate meeting, but that had now turned out to have been a lie to make Bård accept what he had regarded as only temporary preferential treatment, so that he wouldn’t rock the boat, he wrote, using Klara’s expression.

  He pointed out that if Astrid really had paid the bills for one of the cabins then that was only fair given that she had enjoyed the use of it for all these years. He pointed out that Mum and Dad had just had the cabins connected to public water and sewage, and not transferred the ownership of them until this considerable expenditure had been incurred, that Dad had paid the stamp duty, that the new valuation was forty per cent higher than the original one, what kind of mandate had the first estate agent been given? To come up with the lowest possible valuation so that Astrid could have the cabin transferred at the lowest possible price to Bergljot’s detriment, there was my name again, and his?

  When it came to the children, he wrote in conclusion, they were adults and didn’t need telling what the conflict was about, they could make up their own minds.

  Astrid’s reply came just one hour later, at ten to three, as I sat in the café at the railway station with a new battery in my watch. She wrote that Bård had misunderstood, he replied immediately that he hadn’t, unbeknown to me they would appear to have had a fierce exchange about financial and practical matters. In her email to me Astrid wrote that of course she took me seriously, that she had always taken me seriously—so she hadn’t deleted last night’s email after all, that was good although I was guessing the reason was that it had been sent to other people as well as her. She wanted us to meet in person, she had asked me for that only yesterday, she pointed out, if we could meet face to face, she would be happy to come to my place.

  It was a brave effort, but I didn’t want to, everything in me protested. Nothing good would come from it, nothing ever had, I invariable ended up being the one who had to be understanding and listen to how badly my behaviour was affecting everybody else, how terrible it was for Mum and Dad, I knew her language only too well and it usually left me sad and angry. Astrid meant well, but the good she wanted wasn’t for my benefit. She acted in good faith, I didn’t think otherwise, she probably had the best of intentions, she sought reconciliation and cooperation, but there are opposites which can’t be cancelled out, there are times when you must choose.

  The second time I met Bo Schjerven was at the check-in counter at Fornebu Airport. Bo Schjerven and I were flying to Slovakia to talk to newly established writers associations about how we organised things in Norway, Bo was representing the Norwegian Writers Association, I had been despatched by the Association of Norwegian Magazine Publishers to whose board I had been elected after being proposed by Klara, who was deputy chair of its electoral committee, the last thing she did before she moved to Copenhagen. The Slovakian invitation was tabled at my first board meeting, but no one else was free to go; I was happy to go, I wanted to get away.

  In the seven months since I first met Bo Schjerven in the foyer of the Norwegian Theatre, my life had changed completely. I was now living on my own, I had shared custody of the children, I had had my terrifying epiphany, confronted my parents, lost my birth family, and started psychoanalysis. I came straight from a psychoanalysis session to the airport, on edge and flustered, Bo Schjerven and I checked in together, and in the café inside, in the departure hall, I poured out my heart while Bo listened.

  I was basically in deep distress, in shock and grieving, but I had started psychoanalysis, I had taken a step towards change, begun the process although it was painful and fraught with danger. I had been able to get out of bed, shower and dress, clean my teeth and pack, I had remembered my passport
and some money, it was uncanny, it was just like doing the laundry. With Bo Schjerven at the airport, I managed to check in and get on the plane to Slovakia with him, the plane was white. The clouds were white and the sky above the clouds blue and white, we drank white wine and became light and almost as transparent as the air. We landed and were picked up by a white bus and driven to a white castle in a park surrounded by blossoming cherry trees. The room was white, the bed white, the morning white and the bread and the nights were white, the Slovakian poets pale-skinned, how would they manage, how would any of us manage? We drank clear schnapps and lay awake in the grass, which was white with cherry blossom, while the Slovakian poets recited incomprehensible poetry, undoubtedly also white, Bo danced under the trees, Bo turned into a white angel. When we woke late in the morning there was white cheese and milk along with white bread on the white tablecloth in a large bright, white-painted dining room. It was possible to exist in two states simultaneously. To be fundamentally unhappy, shaken and rattled to your core, and yet still experience moments of happiness, and possibly experience them more intensely because of the fundamental unhappiness, and not just moments, but hours, or as in Slovakia two whole days.

  Wednesday 16 December in the morning. The snow had melted, it was dark and rainy, sleeting and grey, I drank coffee and edited the article on Elfriede Jelinek while I wondered whether I ought to reply to Astrid. In spite of everything, she was reaching out to me, she believed that was what she was doing and she couldn’t know that her gesture would be interpreted by me as more of a command than an invitation. It would be unfair of me not to explain to her how I saw her olive branch. I put aside the article on Elfriede Jelinek and wrote to Astrid that yes, we could talk and have contact, but that it was difficult when she wouldn’t address the most important thing for me, when she never commented or touched upon it, and this had become very obvious in situations like the one that had arisen now. It wasn’t, I wrote, that I expected her to choose between Mum and Dad and me, she had always had a different relationship with Mum and Dad than I had, a different childhood to mine. But she couldn’t act as if what I had told her didn’t exist, even if she found it disturbing or impossible to deal with. That was her challenge, I wrote. If she wanted a relationship with me, the things I had told her had to be recognised as essential for that relationship.

  We could talk again, I wrote in conclusion, when the row about the cabins was over, but it was conditional on the above. Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

  ~

  I felt I had made my point and could look forward to a good Christmas. I read my email to Klara, who thought I was being too soft as usual, but suggested that I send it anyway so that I could get on with my life. I sent it while I still had Klara on the phone, I could hear that someone else was trying to call me, but I was busy talking to Klara. When I rang off, I saw that it was Astrid and I was pleased that I hadn’t taken her call, but had sent her an email which stated my position.

  Then Søren rang me. Astrid had called him because Dad had fallen down the stairs in Bråteveien and was in the ICU at Ullevål Hospital.

  Dad? Klara would cry out at night in Copenhagen, but he didn’t reply. Dad! Klara raged in the dark night, but he didn’t hear. If you hadn’t killed yourself, how might I have turned out? Probably much better, Klara grumbled, before she apologised. Sorry, Dad, forgive me, she pleaded, for thinking of myself, and not about how terrible you must have felt as you walked out into the cold water.

  I rang Astrid immediately. Her voice was grave, different from when she had called me from Diakonhjemmet Hospital. Dad had gone to let in two plumbers at eight o’clock that morning but must have tripped on the stairs and bashed his head against the concrete wall; he never reached the front door. Mum, who was still in bed, thought it strange that she didn’t hear any sounds, Dad’s voice, the plumbers’ voices, plumbing noises, so she got up and found Dad lying twisted, covered in blood, seemingly lifeless on the landing. She ran down to the hall to open the door to the plumbers, screaming that she thought her husband was dead. The plumbers entered, ran up the stairs and put Dad in the recovery position, they tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, one physically, the other consulting an app that told you how, after twenty minutes they got Dad’s heart going again. An ambulance had been called, the plumbers had called the ambulance and Mum had managed to call Åsa, who fortunately had taken the car to work that day, had turned around immediately and reached Bråteveien before the ambulance which took Dad to Ullevål, where he was now in the ICU hooked up to a ventilator.

  It sounded serious. And yet the family had so often cried wolf that I didn’t know how to react. They were at Ullevål with Dad, Astrid said, she, Åsa and Mum. The doctors didn’t know if Dad had suffered brain damage, they would carry out an MRI scan in a few hours, then they would know more, for the time being all they could do was wait.

  I called Klara. They’re exaggerating, she said, they’re using your dad’s fall to silence and marginalise Bård and you, she said, but the hours went by and I heard nothing from Astrid. Had it been only exaggeration and game playing, she would have rung me by now, I thought, she would have milked this for all she could, made hay while the sun shone. But she didn’t call, she had things other than me on her mind.

  I told my children, we didn’t know what to make of it. I had meetings, I was busy right up until the evening when I was going to the Nationaltheateret to see Peer Gynt with Lars. When my meetings were over, I still hadn’t heard from Astrid, so it had to be serious, she must have other and more important things on her mind than me. I texted her asking how he was, she replied that he was in a bad way, that it was very serious, that Dad’s heart had stopped beating for twenty minutes. It was untypically matter-of-fact for her, so it had to be serious. I stood in the December darkness at Storo metro station after an editorial meeting, struggling to buy a ticket when I received a call from Bergen Student Union, asking if I could give a talk on Peter Handke on 22 March next year, and heard to my astonishment how I replied in a thick voice that I couldn’t deal with this right now because my father was in hospital and that it was serious. The train arrived, I got on without a ticket and wanted to cry. Dad had been such a huge presence in my life these last few days as a result of the cabin feud, my seeing Bård, Bård’s emails, my childhood coming back to me, my memories of Hvaler, the lavatory which was now connected to mains drains, the well which was no longer in use, I had imagined Dad with the estate agent going through the rooms of both cabins to point out weaknesses, imagined Dad reading Bård’s email when I read Bård’s email.

  I got off the train at Nationaltheateret and called my younger daughter, Ebba, and said I thought it was serious. I was still on the verge of tears, and she heard it and became tearful herself, we were both tearful without knowing why. Peer Gynt started in three quarters of an hour, I decided to have a beer at Burns before I went to the theatre, I texted Lars that I would be in Burns having a beer, he was already there, he replied, with a beer and a cigarette under an outdoor heater. I bought a beer and couldn’t drink it quickly enough, I wanted to buy another one, and Lars couldn’t deny me a beer or three or more given that my dad was in the ICU at Ullevål and might be dying.

  I visited Klara in Copenhagen. I was now working as a theatre critic for a national newspaper and I had asked for, and was given, permission to go to Copenhagen to review a highly acclaimed production of Ghosts at the Kongelige Teater. The production was ruthless in its treatment of both the late Captain Alving and the still-living Mrs Alving, I wrote a feverish review and faxed it home, dreading the thought of my words being printed in a Norwegian newspaper where they could be read by many people, including my family. But I was far away, in Copenhagen, drinking with Klara at Eiffel, Anton Vindskev’s favourite pub, grateful for Klara’s existence and for the existence of dark pubs where you could drink yourself senseless because when everything else was so brightly lit all the time, you had to carry the darkness around within yourself and that was u
nbearable. Anton Vindskev told funny anecdotes and made us forget our unhappiness. He talked about a time when he and Harald Sverdrup went to a poetry convention in Sweden and were put up in a castle with a huge park outside Stockholm, and they went out drinking in Stockholm and Harald Sverdrup got so drunk that he had to be sent back to the castle to sleep it off, while Anton managed to pick up a woman who collected plants, who carried around a bag with a pair of secateurs to take cuttings. When the woman entered the park, she saw many fine specimens: Oh, that’s wonderful! Oh, this is wonderful! She opened her bag and took out the secateurs and helped herself to some cuttings. Anton had eventually got the woman inside the castle and into his room when Harald Sverdrup knocked on his door wearing just a T-shirt with his genitals dangling below the hem, he wanted to join in the fun, but Anton had just managed to shove the bag with the secateurs under his bed and didn’t want to share his fun with Harald Sverdrup, so he gave him a bottle of vodka instead and Harald Sverdrup left holding the vodka bottle and with his genitals still on show, and the next morning they found him lying in the park next to a fork on which he had speared a note reading: Help me. Halald! He had misspelt his own name.

  It felt good to laugh.

  On the Sunday we took the train to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art where they were showing a recording of Marina Abramović’s Rhythm 0 from 1974. Seventy-two different objects were laid out on a long table, a feather, a pistol, a chain, a rose and on the wall behind the table a video of the six-hour-long performance was playing. Visitors could use the objects on Marina Abramović, who was standing in front of the table, to do what they wanted to with them and her, she would continue to stand there for six hours taking and tolerating it, no matter what, that was the experiment, she wanted to see what they would do. At first the audience stood still, they were shy and expecting her to make the first move, but she didn’t. Then one person came up to her tentatively, then another, then a third person broke though the intimacy barrier, then another moved closer, then the next person touched her, people became intrusive and tore at her shirt, they ripped her shirt to pieces, egging one another on, encouraging each other’s audacity, wanting to outdo one another in daring, they became menacing, someone pulled the torn shirt off her and humiliated her, and the audience turned aggressive as if her passive and possibly thus increasingly powerful presence provoked them. One placed the pistol in her hand and raised it so the barrel was pointing straight at her head, and did he also whisper ‘fire!’? When the performance was over, when the clock struck, when she finally moved, when she took a step towards the audience, they retreated in horror and disgust: ‘They could not stand my person because of what they had done to me.’